My My, Hey Hey
by tjesje
Summary: WANTED. Keyboardist suitable for best band on earth. Must be able to play a mean synth solo. Able to deal with assholes would be plus, not required. Or, it's the end of 1983 when Kakyoin Noriaki gets into more than he bargains for.
1. Come on eileen

__Chapter one.__

 _ _Come On Eileen.__

 _ _December 3, 1983.__

Kakyoin sighs and adjusts the name tag on his uniform shirt. He starts leafing and thumbing through the many, many records in section N-O-P, fingers touching and flipping the covers to the tune of the __Kajagoogoo__ single drawling through the tinny store speakers. He tuts when his fingertips touch __Sting__ , who's found himself in the wrong section of the alphabet, and moves to Q-R-S, a little to the right of him.

A slow day, he thinks, just as he likes them.

It's only been a couple of months since Kakyoin applied and was hired to be the face of the newest addition to the town's many record stores, and truly, he quite likes his job. It's mostly quiet; a small rush around three, when distant school bells announce small packs of teenagers flooding the Punk and New Wave corners, hairs in all shapes and colours and jackets with more metal than flashes from Kakyoin's teeth, but otherwise, he hears nothing except for the music he's assigned and contractually obligated to play at any and all hours of his work schedule.

It pays nicely, decently enough, considering he's only here in the hours he's not suffering through classes that seem too long and piles of homework his parents encourage him to begin working on as soon as he hangs his coat and many scarves and dumps his uniform in the washer, entirely without words but with many looks.

He sighs again.

 _ _Too Shy__ finishes its last beats and he turns around to move behind the counter, bending and kneeling to retrieve the latest album added to the store's impressive __Pet Shop Boys__ collection.

He hardly hears the ding of the door past the wild synth of __Young Offender__ , and doesn't notice his slow day interrupted until a shadow colours his red locks auburn. He looks up from his temporary spot on the floor and opens his mouth to speak and greet like he was taught, when he realises he's not speaking to a customer, but a giant in search of magic beans.

After a good ten seconds of staring he figures a good afternoon would have to come out of either of them, and pulls his manners back from the hole they crawled into. He smiles. "Good afternoon, sir. Can I help you with anything?"

The giant looks down at him from underneath the rim of his cap and Kakyoin realises he's still on the floor. He hastily pushes himself up and brushes the dust he imagines being there even after his thorough sweeping earlier that day off his knees. "Excuse me, sorry." He smiles again, but the stranger seems to gain not only four extra wrinkles in between his eyebrows, but twenty whole years as well. He slams his palms down on the counter, making Kakyoin jump and the cash register give a faint metal ding. The stranger makes a noise, or several noises that might have been words, but seems to forget his mouth is covered by the layers of a scarf wrapped around his neck and the collar of his jacket several times. He moves a hand to tug at it and it's then Kakyoin notices there's papers under the man's shovel palms.

The stranger finishes tugging his scarf down sufficiently to reveal lips Kakyoin would have thought handsome if he were attracted to brooding angry giant men (he is), and looks from the papers to Kakyoin without speaking the words he tugged his scarf down for in the first place. Kakyoin tries to read the strangers face but gathers nothing from a twitchy heavy eyebrow and the bulging vein on his forehead, but does notice his nice eyes. "You, uh... do you..." He notices the papers crinkling slightly when the man's hand twitches suddenly and takes a closer look at them. "Ah! Do you need me to hang these for you? In the window, I mean?"

A quick, short nod, and two pamphlets are shoved in his outstretched hands, crinkling slightly. The guy leaves in a hurry and flurry of coattails and Kakyoin is left blinking at the door long after the hollow sound of the bell is dead and gone and the dust on the windowsil the owner insists gives the place a good feel has settled.

* * *

Kakyoin's made it routine to stare at the advert on the store window every day before opening up.

 _ _WANTED. Keyboardist suitable for best band on earth. Must be able to play a mean synth solo. Able to deal with assholes would be plus, not required.__

A couple of people took one of the offered telephone number strips at the bottom, but the stranger hasn't come back to ask him to remove the flyer, so he assumes, he feels he's allowed to assume, the keyboardist suitable for the best band on this earth has yet to be found.

He walks over to the counter and taps his pen against his chin thoughtfully, before writing down how many copies of __Rio__ are left. He remembers his synthesizer at home, fondly, turns around and walks over to the racks of records, starting with A-B-C, to begin his daily routine of alphabetizing the singles and albums yesterday's teen storm misplaced. He __could__ play the synth, he thinks. He's pretty decent, even if he has to say so himself, and though his stage persona might need some work (he blows feebly at the red lock dangling in front of his face), he thinks he might fancy himself half decent with solos, even. But...

He places his hands on the rims of the rack on either side of section G-H-I and hums, His parents would murder him, truly, and he has a job. A nice, steady, relaxing job in a small dusty record shop and he really doesn't need any more than this, or any excitement, because he likes the quiet, and his __steady, relaxing__ job with __steady pay.__ Really, thinking about it, his boyhood dream of being famous in the Pete Townshend way seems so far away, and it's a bad idea, frankly.

He laughs softly to himself and grabs the __T-Rex__ album to take it far away from John Lee Hooker's place in the rack. The idea of himself in a rock band or God knows whatever kind of music the __best band on this earth__ would play makes his fingers twitch, and he has no illusions of grandeur, doesn't exactly think of himself as band-worthy, though he doesn't exactly know what __would__ be, either. It's silly. __Terrible__. A terrible idea. And __yet.__

It couldn't hurt to try, the back of his mind supplies. Maybe, __maybe,__ he __should__ call, just to see if the mysterious giant in black's found his perfect legendary keyboardist and if he hadn't, he could try. He could __try__ and maybe they wouldn't like him at all, or his solos or his playing in general and he wouldn't get hired and that would be __fine, just fine__. Oh, his parents would kill him though.

He glances at the window. One phone call, that's it. A single phone call and he'll see what happens and nothing would, nothing probably would. He thinks up creative scenarios in which his mother would most certainly end his life to pass the time he spends walking to the counter to pick up the horn of the black company phone and dials the number he's tried not to memorize.

* * *

He thinks he's dialled the wrong number until the sing-song French accent on the other line asks him if he's seen the flyers, and supplies him with an address. Now, standing in front of a tall blue door in front of a house Kakyoin can really only describe as __quite massive__ and clutching his case in his sweating palm after having rung the doorbell, he feels a lot less confident as he did when he told the voice he'd like to apply.

The door opens and Kakyoin has to look down a little, something he's not used to, to see a small, blonde lady with a kind smile crinkling the corners of her eyes and hands clasped in front of her apron. "Oh, no, uh," he stutters and takes a step back. "Sorry, I must be at the wrong place, I think."

"Are you here for the band?" She takes a step back and moves aside to motion him in. "They're in the garage, but feel free to step in for a bit! I'll take you there, don't worry hon."

He hesitates a little before thanking the woman, pulling his case off the ground and following her through several doors before she opens a door leading to a concrete floor, bare walls and what seems to be a couple of comfortable sofas and chairs. He hurries in when she smiles at him encouragingly and looks around. He hears a low whistle from the corner of the room and whips around to look at a man with substantial hair sitting behind a substantial drumset. "Wow, damn, you're built like... like that Italian tower. The one that's famous for being all crooked and shit."

Kakyoin recognises him as the French voice from the phone and straightens his back subconsciously. A __tsk tsk__ from the vague direction of the sofas pulls him out of thoughts of battle with his admittedly crooked back. A man stands up from where he was hidden deep inside the bean bag in the corner, brushing off his long robes. "Polnareff, be nice."

Polnareff tuts and lays his drumsticks down in front of him. "What, I __am__. I love that piece of shit tower."

"We can't all look like a nuclear experiment gone wrong, Polnareff."

Polnareff looks at the space behind Kakyoin, insult clearly written on every feature of his face. Kakyoin quickly turns around to see the giant man from the store, cap still obscuring his eyes.

"Wow Jotaro, what the Hell man! You can't go for a guy's looks like that!" Polnareff sits down on his stool again and pouts. Kakyoin's mind is whirling slightly and he figures he must look the part because the mysterious man in the corner decides to put him out of his misery. "Are you here for the synth job?"

He hastily pulls the pamphlet from his butt pocket. "Ah, yes, I called earlier! I'm Kakyoin, I-"

Jotaro cuts him off. "Alright, cool. You have your own synth?"

He blinks and turns around. "Uh, yes. Yes I. I do."

Ten seconds of silence fall, with Jotaro eventually throwing a look at the case on the floor next to his feet. Kakyoin startles. "Oh! Oh yeah, let me..." He bends over to open his case and nearly drops his synth in his haste to set it up on the stand he set on the garage floor. Jotaro grunts. "It's __green.__ "

Kakyoin smiles. "It's __emerald.__ "

"Emerald __is__ green, by God." Jotaro's tongue clicks against his teeth and Kakyoin is a little distracted for the several seconds it takes Jotaro to speak. "Are those... are those letters. You named your synth."

Kakyoin blushes and looks at the golden lettering on the front of his instrument. Polnareff pipes up from the corner wall. "What the fuck Jotaro, you named your __guitar__ , you nerdlord." The man in robes has moved to stand next to the drum set and __tsk__ 's. "You named your __drums__ , man, none of us are safe."

Polnareff whines, a truly heartfelt sound from the back of his throat. "Avdol, don't bag on me like this, dude! Silver Chariot is a __cool__ name and I won't stand for being lumped in with these losers."

Jotaro ignores them and nods at the synthesizer. "Play us something, then." Kakyoin glows red and stutters, Polnareff and Avdol stop bickering and Polnareff yells. "Yeah, man, show us your magic!"

Kakyoin hesitates for all of ten seconds as he debates on what to play (he didn't really think this far ahead), before settling on __Queen__ , and starts playing. Halfway his song he looks up to see Jotaro muttering along the words and giving him no indication to stop, and after several minutes he plays the last notes and looks up. He absolutely can't read Jotaro's face and is about to go through several minutes of stuttered excuses before Avdol laughs deeply. "Man, didn't expect to hear __Bycicle Races__ come out of that thing."

Polnareff looks up. "Dude, uh, that song is __classic__ and I won't hear a bad word." He looks at Kakyoin. "That was ace, man. Really solid, like you were some kind of Nick Rhodes or some shit."

Kakyoin smiles a little at the praise and the wink Polnareff throws him. Jotaro, standing in front of him still, is completely silent and three pairs of eyes stare the man down for what seems like hours, Kakyoin's heart beating in the sides of his head and in his chest. If Polnareff notices the ground swallowing Kakyoin up whole, he mentions nothing of it, but does decide to pour his little heart out.

"Jotaro, buddy, give the boy a break. That was magic, the first good thing we've heard all week. He's got those long ass elegant pianist's fingers, yeah? All long and thin and shit. Dude. This is it." He looks at Kakyoin briefly, "and dude. I'm diggin' that hair. He didn't even have to dye it or anything, and __shit__ , I take four hours just to get half of it to look like it does and by then Avdol's banging on the door and I can't even finish it right."

Jotaro gives him a look. "Bag it, man." He walks up to Kakyoin until the tips of his strangely polished shoes are quite near Kakyoin's green ones. "Didn't you have a job? Record store? Might be hard to squish in practice, what with your schedule and all."

Kakyoin swallows and has to crane his neck to stare at Jotaro's face instead of his massive chest. "Yeah, I did. __Do__ , I mean, but I..."

Jotaro sighs. "But __what__?"

"But I like playing."

Jotaro sighs and stares at something on Kakyoin's forehead very intently for several seconds. "Alright, you're in."

Polnareff looks pleased, Avdol nods, but Kakyoin is entirely unprepared for his own wide smile, making his cheeks hurt and his braces shine slightly in the dim garage ceiling lights. Jotaro coughs and looks away. "Stop smiling like that, Jesus Christ, I'll go blind."

Kakyoin doesn't.

It's an hour of practice and bickering later that the kind woman from earlier, introduced as Jotaro's mother (he sees the resemblance only in cheekbones and blue eyes), opens the door to bring them snacks, and Kakyoin, nibbling on freshly baked goods, remembers to ask something. "I was wondering," he speaks up at nobody in particular, "what do you guys want out of this? The band, I mean." He lets it hang awkwardly in the air before Polnareff stands up and strikes a pose. "Uh, to be a world fuckin' famous rock band of misfits, no big deal."

Avdol chuckles, a rich, deep chuckle. "Yeah, that sounds right."

Jotaro nods, standing a couple feet away, right next to a perfectly comfortable armchair.

Kakyoin watches them for a bit, while they're all quiet and munching on treats, and thinks this has got to be one of the strangest groups of people he's ever met, but is perfectly comfortable being apart of.

"That's alright then," he says. "Sounds perfect."


	2. Wild boys

_Chapter Two._

 _Wild Boys._

 _December 9th, 1983._

Kakyoin taps his slightly chewed on nails on his desk and stares ahead, towards the front of the lecture hall, vaguely in the direction of the blackboard, but closer to the light's reflection on the top of his teacher's head.

He's thinking of too many things to spare any thought at all to his lecture and chooses instead to think about his past weekdays, about his band members, about his mother at home who would be absolutely furious knowing he'd taken a risk, and about Holly's delicious cookies.

By the time he manages to focus his vision, the people around him are already packing their bags and getting ready to leave and he clumsily gets up, stuffing his notebooks back in his bag and stumbling towards the cafeteria. He blearily rubs at his eyes to get rid of the hazy feeling of studying all weekend and prepares to find a table as physically empty as possible.

He finds one, at the far end of the cafeteria, and sets his bag down to get his wallet, when he hears a yell of something that sounds vaguely like his name. He thinks it a little vain of himself to think his name would be shouted across a room full of people who might have similar ones, when he hears it again, and this time definitely recognises the French lilt to the voice booming over the happy lunch conversation.

"Kakyoin, my man!"

He ducks his head, before quickly standing up to scope out big silvery hair. He finds it near the middle of the room, where Polnareff is standing and waving to get his attention.

"Didn't think you guys'd be here."

Jotaro snorts. "What, did you think we'd be at any of the other million schools in this five-hundred person town?"

Kakyoin sits down on the empty space next to Jotaro. "No, just... I thought you guys were, I don't know, adult."

Kakyoin leans his chin on his hands and Jotaro stabs at his rice and peas a little. "Yeah? I thought you'd be at the kindergarten two roads down, so I guess we're both wrong."

Kakyoin laughs. "Wow, no offense."

Polnareff slides in before Jotaro manages to even open his mouth. "None taken! Say, I was having a think. A couple of thinks. Wondering..." He points his fork at Kakyoin, dangling a carrot in front of his face. "We've got a keyboard and everything now, right? So, talented, small synth player, grumpy guitarist-" He points the carrot at Jotaro before motioning to himself and Avdol with his free hand. "-Cool, silent bass player, and exceptionally handsome drummer. Are we, like, New Wave now?"

Jotaro snorts and motions at Polnareff's sculpted hair. "Might as well be Flock of fuckin' Seagulls."

Polnareff gasps and grabs at his chest. "Bro! Alright, I'm not one to get offended by shallow-ass commentary, but these luscious locks have endured much, and they have feelings. And they're weeping, dude. Weeping big fat tears."

Jotaro grimaces. "Dude, okay, don't ever say that to me again."

Avdol hasn't attempted to stab anything onto his fork and opts to grab his bottle of water instead. "Are we even making enough New Wave music to be considered New Wave? We've mostly done covers so far, and all original stuff we have are those creepy murder songs Polnareff writes."

Polnareff slings his arm around his shoulders just while Avdol prepares to take a long sip from his drink. "Avdol, hoser, those are real songs with real feeling. Sure, they're creepy-ass murder songs, but..." He stopped himself. "Yeah, no, they're freaky. We gotta get something else."

Avdol finally swallows his first mouthful of water. "Case in point."

Kakyoin shrugs. "I hear murder songs are all the New Wave rage these days." He looks to the side slightly before moving to pluck the piece of chicken off Jotaro's fork and sticking it in his own mouth. Jotaro's mouth goes slack and Polnareff bursts into laughter. "Dude! Oh my God, Jotaro, you're losing your touch, my man. I can't believe I just saw this happen with my own two beautiful blue peepers!"

Jotaro glares at him before putting his fork down. "Alright, you can have my fucking chicken, because this," he motions at his soggy rice and bland chicken, "is bogus."

Polnareff pouts. "Lord, I know, I wish Tonio was back, this is bull." He lights up suddenly and tosses his fork back down on his plate with a plastic clatter. "Hey, uh, Kakyoin, would your friends miss you terribly if we happened to, uh..." He searches for the table Kakyoin was at earlier, but the corner table is still completely void of people and he clears his throat. "Ah, the Reflex truly is a lonely child."

Jotaro scoffs and stands up. "Yeah, and I'm hungry like the fuckin' wolf. Let's go."

Kakyoin looks up so quickly he feels his neck crack and feels it spread to his shoulders and spine. "Where are we going?"

Polnareff motions for him to follow. "Out, duh!"

* * *

"Alright, I know the cafeteria food was lacking, but I can't believe we gotta walk to get some decent grindage." Polnareff sighs as he sticks his hands deep down the pockets of his slacks. "Being a poor student with hopes and dreams is really crampin' my style."

Jotaro kicks a pebble down the street. Kakyoin tries to follow where it'll land, but it's out of sight before it even hits the road. Avdol tuts. "Maybe next time you're out to buy hair gel I should just cut you off. Maybe, if you broke less combs and bought less L'Oreal Studio Line, we could get ourselves a car."

Polnareff gasps. "Wow, never, how dare you."

Jotaro sighs. "Give me a break, it's only a five minute walk, and I need to get a burger in me, stat. I'll buy your destitute ass food if you get me a drink."

Polnareff nods and hums. "A shady deal on a street corner, to be sure, but a deal nonetheless." He ducks under the hand Avdol'd reached out to open the door for them and enters the snackbar first. "Alright, you get me a good cheeseburger and I'll make for what is clearly the best table in here." He nods his head at the corner booth. "I'll get your drink when the food's still hot."

Kakyoin follows Avdol and Jotaro to the counter. Jotaro looks at him over his shoulder. "I'll order for you too; what do you want?" Kakyoin splutters and shakes his head but Jotaro's already turned around and ordered for him in the couple of seconds it took for him to find the words "you really don't have to."

Polnareff's casually draped his arms over the back of the seat when they approach. "Fanta, yes?" He doesn't wait for an affirmative grunt before his boots clack against the linoleum floor as he leaves for the buzzing cooler in the corner. Kakyoin decides to sit down in the corner, putting his bag on the floor at his feet, and waits for Jotaro and Avdol to slide into the booth on either side of him.

"Ah, fuck!" Polnareff curses before grabbing one of his cans back off the floor, walking up to their booth and handing it to Jotaro. "Ah, uh, here, man. I love you dude."

Jotaro picks a fry from his plate and chucks it at Polnareff's hair. "Then you'll absolutely adore my fist in your balls if you ever do this to me again."

Polnareff quickly sets down his own can before maneuvering himself into the seat next to Avdol, his hands protecting his crotch. "No, man, forgiveness! You know I love my Eiffel Tower."

Jotaro glares at him. "I will deck you." Kakyoin smiles into his burger. Avdol grimaces. "Alright, man, you're protective of your parts, I get it. Now let me eat my delicious meat in peace."

Jotaro puts his burger back on his plate. "I don't ever want to hear you talk about delicious meat and Polnareff's parts again, man. Don't ruin this beautiful moment for me. The first bite is the best one."

Polnareff waves his own burger at him, mouth full of patty and tomato, pickles nearly dripping from his bun. "Alright, well, first of all, no, the middle part is obviously the best. The first bite is all patty and hardly any sauce or burger. Also, stop hoggin' the ketchup. You're such a bogart, Jotaro."

Avdol looks away from Jotaro emptying the entire tube of ketchup into his own plate in response. "I agree, man, but close your mouth. I'm about to ralph, God."

Polnareff twists in his seat. "Man, you buzzkill, the added oxygen totally makes the bite taste even better. I'm sure Kakyoin can relate. He looks like that kinda guy."

Kakyoin snorts. "Well, first of all, you're wrong." He chews with his mouth perfectly closed to demonstrate, and swallows. "First impressions aren't everything, you know. When Jotaro first walked into the record shop I thought he was there to skin me and wear me."

Jotaro noticeably chokes on his fry and Polnareff closes his mouth to avoid spraying the contents of it in Kakyoin's dish. He swallows loudly. "Oh, no, Kakyoin, darling, that's just his face." He bends towards Kakyoin and whispers loudly, "Jojo here gets nervous when talking to pretty strangers."

Jotaro looks their way, his look digging a six foot hole at Polnareff's feet. "I don't know what you mean."

Polnareff huffs a laugh. "Ha, alright, be that way, Mr. McCoy," (Avdol snickers. "Wow, bad one.")

Jotaro's coughing dies down and then they're suddenly all eating their food in silence.

Kakyoin stops a fry halfway to his mouth and sighs. "Guys, I'm... not so sure about this anymore." Jotaro hums and stabs another fry with his plastic fork, effectively snapping both in half. "About what?"

"About joining the band. I think maybe..." He swallows. "Maybe I should quit while I'm ahead, you know?"

Polnareff looks at him pensively. "Well, Kakyoin, my lad, I'm afraid I can't let you do that."

Avdol, next to him, nods and folds his arms.

"You see, I only just made peace with being New Wave five seconds ago, and only because hessians freak me out and I can't grow out my hair like that, and to be honest with you, I can't go back now. I'm too far ahead in the game. Also, uh, like, I'd love to get all sentimental and shit, but I don't roll like that. Stone cold heart of a macho lover, and all. A heartbreaker."

Jotaro snorted and stopped assaulting his plate. "Dude, you cried for two hours when Captain Beefheart announced their last album."

Polnareff huffed and punched Jotaro's arm. "Man, shut up, those were real tears of agony, that doesn't count. They weren't the Magic Band for nothing. Wizards of my heartstrings, man, I swear."

Jotaro takes the brief moment of emotional distraction as a sign to point the opening of his Fanta can towards Polnareff's face, get it as close to his nose as he possibly can, and pull the lip with a click and a deafening hiss.

Avdol didn't have to raise his voice to be heard over Polnareff's horrified screams. "What they mean is... we're attached to you now, man. We're a band. You can't just abandon a band."

Kakyoin groans. "Alright, but my mother will kill me."

Polnareff stops his hands combing through his wet and soiled hair. "Man, if that's all-"

Avdol elbows him in the side and Polnareff squeals. "Man, that's my liver! I need that for drinking and shit!"

Avdol laughs. "I foresee a 30 on that biology test, my dear friend."

"Well, if it were there, your sharp ass elbow fucked it up. You owe me two beers to fix it." Polnareff gingerly rubs his side and straightens. "What I meant to say, before I was rudely interrupted, was, of course, that, were push come to shove, we'd totally kill your mom for you, dude."

"Dude."

Polnareff scoffs. "Okay, clearly I'm dealing with a table of total noobs here-" (Kakyoin splutters. "I can't believe you just said this to me.") "-but I happen to not be above homicide. But only if I really have to. Like when I'm about to be boxed myself, that is. Or when someone stands in the way of the happiness of a dear, treasuredfriend with freakishly big palms."

Kakyoin wipes his hands on the pile of napkins Avdol grabbed from the stack for Polnareff to save his hair with. "Appreciated, but no thanks."

Polnareff nods, wet strands of his hair uselessly flopping down towards his face. "No sweat."

Jotaro sips thoughtfully on the remainder of his Fanta. "Your synth is kinda big. Maybe we should set it up in my garage for the time being. Saves you the hassle."

Kakyoin nods. "I'll have a talk with my mother, but if you don't see me in forty-eight hours, you're going to have to look six feet under."

Pensive silence follows. Polnareff hums the funeral march.

* * *

That evening, Kakyoin sits in the living room of his house, on a couch too hard to be comfortable, staring at his mother hanging Christmas decorations like gallows. He swallows. "Mother?"

She turns around, holding a long string of tinsel. "Yes, dear?"

He shrinks in his chair slightly before righting himself. He refrains from nervously twirling his hair. "I... I was thinking... I was thinking I might want to join a band."


	3. What's on your mind (Pure Energy)

_December 20, 1983._

It's 2:30 in the afternoon and Kakyoin absolutely does not want to get up. He rubs frantically at his eyes, his eyelids stinging, red and swollen, to get rid of the sand that comes with sleeping the night, morning and half the afternoon away, but it doesn't seem to do anything to make him feel less lethargic. He tries to remember if he took the pills his mother keeps refilling and stacking behind his bathroom mirror, but can't, and focuses on his desk. His homework is slightly illuminated by the green light from his curtains. He looks away, focuses on his dresser bitterly instead, and stares at his hairbrush, his Duran Duran poster, the knick-knacks he keeps like mementos.

He needs to get up, and wants to, but instead puts his head back down with a heavy sigh. It's a slow day, he reckons, though these are always slightly less in his favour.

He startles a little when he first hears a small knock on his bedroom window, but after a heartbeat or two supposes a bird got to it and rolls around over his cover, getting his feet tangled up in the folds of it. There's some yelling outside; he closes his eyes, decides to listen to the honking of cars and the voices of halfway responsible Christmas shoppers. He opens his eyes so he doesn't fall asleep again and looks at his tiny plastic Christmas tree and imagines seeing his own reflection in the golden and green miniature baubles, looking quite pathetic probably. His mother insisted he bring some holiday cheer to his bedroom so he'd bashfully picked up the conifer replica, baubles and a handful of tinsel from her massive pile of it. He'd attempted to hang one of the strings of garland outside his door in a sad replica of a wreath, and he thinks he didn't do too terribly.

A second, bigger object hits his window with more force than the last and he briefly averts his eyes from the small pile of fairy lights on his desk to stare at his drapes. He blinks his dry eyes and they water slightly. He's silent until another tap at his window forces him to stand up and shake his heavy limbs enough to wake them up for the walk to the windowsill. He waits a little, debating whether he's willing to subject his eyes to the bright light of day, but a familiar voice startles him into moving one of his curtains aside.

"Hey! Kakyo-man! Kaky-bro-in? Kaky-boy? Avdol, help me out here, man."

"Broriaki."

The resounding smack of a high-five rings through the small neighbourhood. "Hah! Good one. Hey, can you get me another one of those pretty rocks? The round ones."

Kakyoin opens the left half of his window to try to shush the people he chooses to call his friends and is almost pelted in the head by one of his mother's pebbles. "God, _what_ the Hell?"

Polnareff whips his head up and yells again. "Kakyoin, my man, our beautiful, long and thin-fingered pianist, our long lost friend, _brother_ -"

Kakyoin quickly yanks at the other side of his curtain and pries open both windows before risking sticking his upper body out now he knows Polnareff is out of shots. "What are you _doing_? Keep it _down_ , please, oh my God." He turns around and runs his hand frantically through his hair several times; when he turns back it's ruffled and having trouble staying down the way he likes. He bends his chest and leans on his arms, looks at Avdol who's leaning into his mother's prized apple tree, leaning his right boot against the bark of it while his left sinks into layers and layers of snow he hadn't noticed falling overnight. Polnareff shuts his mouth with a clack of his teeth, but can't resist opening it again.

"Buddy, being grounded is one thing, but then we didn't see you in school at all, man! And, like, we know you're a major zeek, and all. _Worried,_ is what we were. Like good pals. So," he stretches out the oand moves sideways to wave his arm at a van Kakyoin hadn't noticed before, "we took our sweet ride to pick you up!"

Avdol coughs.

"I mean, Avdol's ride. It's his ride. But it was totally my idea! Isn't it nice, though? It was way cheap 'cause Avdol hassled like a pro." Polnareff points at Avdol accusingly. "This guy, though, this guy thought you'd be behind the red curtains! I told him, green's more your thing, but he wanted me to try anyways! Fool, I say! We were so lucky your mom didn't skin us."

At Kakyoin's worried look, he hastens to add, "or see us! She didn't see us. At all. Cool out, man, we were out of there in a flash, an earth _second_ , and made way to the pretty green window."

"Don't bag on me, man, I like red." Avdol scoffs and pushes himself off the tree with his heel. "I'm still looking for a guy to paint the van, too. Same colour as my bass, I'm thinking. _Polnareff_ disagrees."

Polnareff shrugs. "Band name would be, like, a million percent better. Tag style, all over the side."

"First of all, what band name? Second of all, let me tell you why you're wrong, Jean, my tragically misled friend-"

Kakyoin frantically ruffles his hair, curls knotting together and making a thick, red spider's web, and nearly hits his head on the top half of his window frame. "Alright, okay, nice van Avdol-" Avdol nods, moving to stand next to Polnareff, "- _but_ can we stop yelling, please!"

"Ah yes, good point!" Polnareff hollers up at him. "Avdol, get the ladder! _Please,_ of course, darling."

Avdol gives him a blank look but turns around anyway, walking towards his rusty-brown tragedy on wheels. Kakyoin looks beside himself, in a terrible way. "A _ladder?_ Polnareff, I know you mean well, but I'm grounded for the rest of my life. I'm only 19! That's a long sentence."

Polnareff grabs the folding ladder from Avdol's grasp and moves to stand almost directly underneath Kakyoin's second floor bedroom. "Dude, that's heavy, but also, she can't make it any longer! Now, come on! We miss you, man. I broke our remote launching it half a mile out our window and now there's no reason to watch tv because I'd have to get up all the time and I'm bored! We need you, the band needs you, we're nothing without you, and so on! Man, come on, grab your stuff and let's go!"

"I'm flattered. Thanks. Let me just-" He stands back and slams his window closed.

"What? Kak, no! Man! The van, look at the van!" Polnareff looks at Avdol, who shrugs. "Dude, we planned a super cool heist for you and everything! You're the prisoner, we're the, uh, you know, family and friends on the outside who always break the guy out in the movies." He's climbed halfway up the shoddy ladder during his desperate monologue.

"Alright, alright! Stop yelling, _please,_ I'm begging." Kakyoin rapidly pulls his curtains aside and swings the window fully outwards. "Take this, please! Heavy!" He half balances his synthesizer over the edge, wincing in sympathy when he sees some of the paint scratch onto his window frame. Polnareff takes the heavy instrument and slowly takes it further away from his grasp until Avdol grabs a hold of it, turning to get it to the back of his car. Kakyoin disappears for a couple more seconds to get his stand and hand it down the same way. "Alright, and my stuff. Head's up!" The backpack nearly hits Polnareff in the nose and Avdol chokes out a surprised laugh and strides up to hold the ladder for the both of them.

Kakyoin doesn't think about his coat still hanging by the rack in his hallway until he's rubbing his reddened hands together in the back of the van, Polnareff making him sit with a massive box and a plethora of empty cans. He spots a tacky miniature disco ball drilled through the roof and funky dice dangling from the mirror. It's charming in its own way, he supposes, but he'll need to talk to Avdol about the R-rated window decal.

Polnareff half turns in his seat and looks at him past the fake leather seat. "Jotaro missed you too, dude. He didn't say it but I saw it in those cold, empty, killer eyes. Gum?" He holds out a stick.

Kakyoin flashes his teeth and points at his braces. "No, thanks though. Also, I'm sure the man with the completely soulless, shining, ocean-blue eyes and his dolphin helix piercing and the six cats was absolutely devastated. He probably killed a man over it."

Polnareff nods solemnly. "He did, he did."

Avdol honks loudly at a family of birds on the zebra crossing.

* * *

The closed garage door does very little to hide the pure noise coming from the other side of it, and Kakyoin's got to admire Jotaro's amplifier for managing to make it past the soundproofing before bending to get the handle and yanking it upwards. Polnareff bounces excitedly next to him. " _Dude_ , what do you think of the van? Avdol worked so many weekends for it, I was honestly bored to death."

Kakyoin straightens his back when the door bounces off the top slightly and settles, moving to get inside and out of the cold as quickly as he can. "It's really nice, I swear! Is it supposed to make that noise, though? You know, the-"

A bang explodes from the near vicinity of where Avdol is parking the car and Polnareff whirls around to look for fire. Kakyoin laughs. "That one. Maybe we should get it to someplace."

Jotaro stops strumming violently and sets his guitar down, the last notes still ghosting from the amplifier next to its stand. "I know someone we could see about that shit." He seems to think for a couple of seconds. "And painting too. He could do that too."

Polnareff's still twisting to get a look of the van. "That's great, dude! I'm going to see if our friend is still alive and all, I'll be _riiiight_ back."

"You're alive." Jotaro drops down on the loveseat, nearly entirely covering it by himself, looking like the overgrown poster boy for not giving a shit. Kakyoin scoffs and sags down into the large purple bean bag next to a new poster of a turtle eating a strawberry, framed by a wreath of red berries. "Not thanks to you. What happened to forty-eight hours?"

Jotaro carefully sets his guitar back on its stand. "I thought that was some kind of metaphor or a geek reference to something or whatever, I don't know. You're here anyway." A pack of crisps hits the side of his head with a _thwack_ and lands next to his feet with barely any sound at all. "Jotaro, be nice." Avdol doesn't look any worse for wear, luckily, strutting in and moving to sit on the sofa on Kakyoin's other side now Kakyoin's occupied his usual bean bag spot. Polnareff sits by his drum set as usual and picks up his sticks, without a doubt to provide his own jokes with a little push.

"Jotaro, dude, what was that about this prime car care?"

Jotaro picks up his guitar again to pluck feebly at the strings after making sure the amplifier was off. "One of my cousins owns this garage. He's a dick, but he'll do it if mom asks."

"Dude, you have so many cousins. Holly tried to tell me about them once and I zoned out halfway through." Polnareff moves up to get a drink from the small fridge they'd set up in the corner next to the door. He tosses Kakyoin a can that nearly hits his head, but the rest of them catch them expertly like shit being tossed at their faces happens every day. Kakyoin reckons it does.

"Yeah well," Jotaro plays a small acoustic riff, "you don't have to spend Christmas with them."

Kakyoin laughs. "I contemplated hanging myself with my mom's tinsel; I'd love to spend Christmas with them."

Jotaro pauses thoughtfully. Polnareff winces. Avdol leans his chin on the tips of his fingers.

"Guys, Kakyoin's near death and depressing family life aside, and I know we haven't even opened our drinks yet, but don't you think we're missing something?"

Polnareff scans the room, his eyes falling on each of them. "Well, uh, sweet garage, bangin' instruments, snacks, Aquaman's here, we've got our tiny yet lanky redhead, sexy, dark fortune teller, _moi-_ "

Avdol sighs and folds his arms. "Yeah, true, you're right. I just thought, you know, with Kakyoin finally back with us, it'd be a good opportunity."

Jotaro leans to put his unopened can at the foot of his couch. "Okay, what're you getting at?"

"I was waiting to do this until Noriaki got back, so I was thinking," he takes a rolled up pamphlet from his robes and spreads it out on the coffee table, the edges curling back up as soon as he takes his fingers from it, "we might start thinking of a name for our band."

Polnareff stands up and gets closer, and they all crowd around the glossy paper. Kakyoin reaches out to flatten the edges of it. Avdol smiles.

"That is, if we want to mean anything at the _Battle of the Bands._ "


	4. Rock me amadeus

_December 22, 1983._

"Naming the band after the band's drum kit is _totally_ legit and also, second of all, we all know my Silver Chariot is the star of us merry men."

The four of them are gathered in Jotaro's garage, all bent slightly around a bag of assorted candies Holly bought for the four of them. Jotaro wraps his lips around the neck of a bottle of orange Fanta, Avdol has his head in his hands and is rubbing his temples. "Polnareff, man, we're not naming the entire band after the love of _your_ life."

Polnareff sags back down on the sofa and empties two different flavours of six pixy stix in his open mouth. "Avdol, you know _you're_ the love of my life, but I don't think Magician's Red's the name to go with, either."

Avdol ruffles his hair, accidentally pulling a few locks of hair from the ponytail he'd carefully assembled all his locks in, bends forward to get himself a box of razzles and huffs a laugh. "Alright, alright. That's true, you dick." Polnareff tries to laugh but sprays pixy stick everywhere instead, a cloud of pink and green powder hanging in the air for a small moment before raining down on the recently cleaned coffee table.

Kakyoin clutches a pack of nerds in his fist and a coca cola in his other, sitting on the far end of the loveseat, Jotaro's shoulder at the height of his eyebrows and his knees pointing into his own. It's comfortable, though the garage is a little cold, and he has to admit he misses his warm, comfortable bed a little bit, but Polnareff's gotten into the habit of chucking rocks at his window until he shoots up from his sheets, and slotting a ladder underneath his windowsill before he has the chance to open it. He usually tries to answer before his mother might hear and wonder what the funny little man with the big hair is doing outside in the snow destroying her pansies with his big black boots. He shudders and earns a look from Jotaro.

"Jotaro, dude, I'm scared to even ask _you_ because you'll say shit like... it'll be some shit like," Polnareff lowers his voice in a scarily accurate mimic Jotaro's baritone, "' _Please_ , oh _please_ can we call ourselves Jotaro and the Flying Fish'? Or, or, or some shit like ' _oh please_ Polnareff, let's call ourselves', fuck if I know, 'Dolphin and the Dicks'. Oh! Oh! 'Kujo and the Whales'!" He puts his bottle down with a laugh and starts rubbing his hands together to rid them of the cold slipping from underneath the garage door. Jotaro flicks a pixy stick at his forehead but Avdol catches it before it hits and empties it in his own mouth to mingle with the powder ball already in there. Jotaro grabs a second one to try again, and it lands in Polnareff's lap after hitting him smack in the middle of his eyebrows. "Alright, dickhead, don't make my voice do that ever again, but Kujo and the Whales is actually a good one, so fuck you."

"Dude, okay, mister frontman _,_ throw me some more of those so I can just lay here and spend _all_ my energy mocking you."

A handful of pixy stix are launched across the room, some making it to Polnareff's hair, the rest hitting him between the eyes and on his cheeks.

"Appreciated." He grabs the fallen soldiers from his hair, lightly wiping the gel off them before plopping sideways and laying his head on Avdol's lap and tossing his legs over the edge of their seat. Avdol sighs, puts his face in one of his hands and the elbow of the other on Polnareff's nose, his entire body showing he's done this many times and suffers through it regardless.

Jotaro makes a little noise, something like a growl and a wordless question. He leans his elbows on his knees. "All of you suck, by the way. We've been sitting here for three hours. I'm not built to hang out with you guys for this long."

Polnareff doesn't turn his head before speaking and his voice sounds nasal from underneath Avdol's hoodie sleeve. "Dude, alright, but don't even call me at eight again. That's bunk and I won't stand for it. I misheard your guttural raspy smokers' groaning and now we've showed up four hours early and I nearly punted my cigarettes out the window _and_ Kak kicked me in the _face_."

"On _accident_ , it was an accident!" Kakyoin pipes up from behind Jotaro's arm, "Your face was _right_ there!"

Polnareff flaps his arm wildly, but still hasn't moved his head. "Your boots have _heels_ on them, man! I mean, I love it and you pull 'em off well, good style, good look, _way_ crucial, but when an innocent, unsuspecting guy is trying to break into your bedroom to have a peep at your stuffs, they're like... they're killer, deadly in a bad way."

Avdol rubs his temples. "How about 'Wheel of Fortune'?"

Jotaro shakes his head. "Nah, has a bad ring to it."

"Hm, I know what you mean." Avdol moves his arm to lay across Polnareff's entire face, sleeve covering his mouth, Polnareff spluttering into the fabric but resigning to his fate. "Maybe... Dark Blue Moon?"

Kakyoin sits up to grab a chick-o-stick and unwraps it gingerly. "Not as catchy, sounds like it'd give me pox." He unwraps the plastic wrapper and bites half off his candy in one bite. He moves it to the inside of his cheek. "No offense. Truly."

Polnareff barks a muffled laugh and gets a mouthful of Avdol's arm. Avdol chuckles and moves his arm up off Polnareff's face to pull his hair free, gather the locks all in one hand and using the other to pull them all into his hair tie to make something resembling his first ponytail. "Point made, dude, damn. Any suggestions that don't immediately have you break into hives?"

Kakyoin stares at the dim tube light on the ceiling, watching dust particles float from left to right until he sees yellow and blue spots. "Um... maybe..." He runs his hand through his red lock and blinks wildly so he can see Jotaro's face through the blur of colours. "How about 'the Stardust Crusaders'?"

"Alright, I usually don't take anything from a dude who's main candy is Good & Plenty, but... sounds camp, I love it!" Polnareff sits up a little too fast, his hair bobbing slightly on his head and legs nearly swinging at the bottles on the coffee table. "No, 'the', though. Let's leave the 'the' out of there. Just 'Stardust Crusaders' sounds nice, like we're out there exploring galaxies and shit, Return of the Jedi, where I'm Han Solo, duh."

Kakyoin snorts. "Isn't your style more C-3PO, though?"

"Offense!"

Jotaro cuts them off. "My delicate punk sensibilities, please. Stardust Crusaders sounds alright, but let's think on it a little more."

Avdol hums, folds his arms and nods. He crosses his legs and _does_ actually make his thick-heeled doc martens connect with Polnareff's knee. "Jotaro's right. I like it too, it's catchy, bulk, but we have to be a hundred percent sure. We can't be one of those bands who switches names all the time." He slaps Polnareff in the back. "Also, you better know _I'm_ Han. Jotaro's Chewbacca."

Jotaro glares at him for a moment before gulping the remainder of his Fanta. He burps before letting out a startlingly good impersonation of a Wookiee. "Let's go, my cousin doesn't wait."

* * *

"Dude, we've been waiting for twenty minutes."

The tips of Polnareff's ears and nose are bright red. Jotaro holds up his hand. "He's doing this because we were ten late, I know he is. No way he forgot."

Kakyoin wonders for a couple minutes what sort of person Jotaro's cousin could be, and places his weight on his other leg, feeling the wetness of the snow melt into the green toes of his boots, which he'd evidently not waterproofed. He watches his breath come out of his mouth in clear clouds for a little while before hiding his mouth in his scarf and watching them come from his nose instead. He stuffs his hands in his pockets to warm them up a little and stares at the neon sign of the bar they're outside of. It's some sort of Cowboy or Western-style business, he guesses, looking at the horseshoes on both sides of the door and the cowboy hat on the S of the glowing letters.

They look up when they hear the click of a lock, and watch the door swing open broadly, a tall man stepping out to smoke his cigarette. When he notices them he tips his ridiculous hat slightly and Kakyoin sees something glint in his smile. Gold lettering, maybe, he's not sure, and he doesn't want to stare. "Jotaro, man! We're not open yet, but if you want a beer I can smuggle you one. Alcohol-free, of course." He throws the rest of them a fat wink. Jotaro sighs. "Johnny offered to see our van, is he in?"

The man frowns. "Johhny? Yeah, he's out back. Didn't tell me anything about a van though. Oi, Johhny!" He shouts to somewhere behind him and Polnareff blows in his hands to hide the fact he's stretching to look. The man lights his cigarette and huffs. "I'll get him, you guys go ahead to the garage." He throws them an impressive collection of keys mercifully held together by a ring that looks to be struggling. Avdol snatches it before it hits him in the chest and the man disappears back indoors.

"Come on."

Kakyoin follows Jotaro first, taking his hands from his pockets when he realizes keeping them in his thin jacket's pockets does absolutely squat and rubbing them together while blowing his rapidly cooling breath on them. Jotaro struggles with the keys for several minutes, trying to find the right one in the sea of metal, when the garage next to the bar opens and the man from before appears slowly, long legs first, patchy beard and big grin later. "Sorry about that! You were 'late', apparently."

"Damn right. Gyro, man, I told you to leave 'em waiting a couple minutes."

"Babe, look at 'em, this little guy is frozen to the bone!" He motions at Kakyoin, who's too cold to be upset. Even Polnareff seems too frozen to comment on anything, and Kakyoin's sure he'll regret not commenting at all during their first meeting with one of Jotaro's apparently many cousins later. This guy looks absolutely nothing like Jotaro, zero family resemblance, except for maybe the deep frown and immense capacity to glare. He rolls down the ramp by the door, the gloves on his hands glinting a little in the harsh light in the large square room as he wheels himself to the door, something bright and plastic glinting from the wheels of his wheelchair. Shoulder-length blond hairs peek out from underneath the hood of a hoodie several sizes too large.

"Alright, fine, where's this piece of shit van making all the racket y'all want me to fix?"

Gyro lets go of Kakyoin's shoulders and walks up to him, rubbing his hood in lieu of ruffling his hair, slowly making more blond locks fall in front of the boy's face. "Johnny, be nice. _Famiglia,_ and all."

Johnny reveals his messy hair and starts quickly pushing it behind his ears before pushing his hood back up. "Yeah, yeah, _il sangue non è acqua_ and all that other stuff you keep saying. I'll fix it, I said I would, but it's shit, man."

Gyro laughs and steps aside so Avdol can drive inside. He jogs slightly to close the garage door, regardless of it being a total distance of two feet, and gives the van a once over. "Damn, I mean, I'm the good cop, but this baby isn't pretty. What do you need done?"

Polnareff scoffs, opens his lips for the first time to test whether the ice holding them together had melted yet. "Like, everything? The whole lot, so to speak. Paint, the exhaust, the, uh, alternator van, some more of that tough garage type speak."

"Yeah, pretty much." Avdol gets out of the driver's side and moves to stand next to Polnareff. "The exhaust makes a lot of noise. It didn't at first, it took a couple of days, and now it does it whenever I slow down."

Johnny nods. "Alright, yeah, sounds easy enough. I'll fix it and that'll be two million dollars, thanks."

Gyro hums, opens the hood, strolls to the back and crouches his long legs, bending them so much Kakyoin thinks it might be impossible for him to get back up again. "We'll do it for free." He shoots Johnny a stern look. " _Famiglia_."

Kakyoin goes to stand next to Polnareff, who's found the space heater and is resting his butt against it to cure it of the frostbite that's settled in, and leans slightly so both his hands hover over the heat rising up from the front of it. Johnny scoffs loudly. "This is why we never have profits, you dick. If you don't stop handing out free beers we'll be bankrupt in a month. Provide for me, dude. Your vows and shit."

"In sickness and in health, Johhny, _il mio tesoro_ , I know." He laughs a little, a strange little laugh that has the corners of Kakyoin's mouth pulling up too. "They can repay us later, and I won't give 'em free drinks. Deal?"

Johhny huffs and wheels to the desk in the corner, grabbing a toolbox. "Fine, God, okay, but for the love of God, stop feeding Josuke scotch. You know he's underage, yeah?"

Gyro laughs. "Yeah, yeah, this isn't Europe, and all that. I know, babe." He kisses Johhny's cheek when he bends his knees and grabs the toolbox from his lap. "I'll fix this rusty honey in no time, don't worry."

Johnny clicks his tongue and moves to where Jotaro's standing with hands deep in his pockets and frown heavily set in his forehead. He looks ten years older than his actual twenty, cap pulled down as far as it can go. "So uh, Jotaro," Johnny mutters, "how's the band, and stuff."

Jotaro grunts. "It's fine." His eyes move briefly towards his smaller cousin. "It's good. We're good."

"Ah. Nice, alright."

Polnareff pushes his hands off the wall to stand on Johnny's other side. "We're _mad_ good. Bangin', truly."

"The _tits_ , even?"

Polnareff nods, smirk on his lips. "The biggest."

Johnny stares at the tips of Gyro's snake leather boots. "Sounds good." Gyro moves to the hood of the car and pops it open, humming a tune Kakyoin's heard a dozen times but can't put a name to.

"We happen to be out of entertainment for New Year's Eve in the Steel Ball Run," Johnny says, managing to sound bored, disinterested and annoyed at the same time. " _If_ you're interested."

Jotaro starts for a bit, a fraction of a second, hardly noticeable. Polnareff is more obvious. "Are you offering us a _gig,_ dude? What! That's... that's, like... woah, hold on guys, I think I'm dying, my heart's like... it's giving out, guys."

Gyro laughs his strange, infectious laugh again, still bent over the hood of the car. "Yeah, we're offering you a gig. New Year's. Eight to as long as you can hold up."

Avdol hums, still near the space heater but not wanting to get too close and toast his buns a little hotter than he likes them. Kakyoin feels like his skeleton might jump out of his body, his skin vibrating like his voice. "That'd be amazing! That'd be an amazing opportunity!"

"Yeah, we'll do it." Jotaro plucks a cigarette from his coat pocket. He takes a little longer than usual to light it. "Thanks."

Johnny stuffs his hands in his hoodie pockets. "I'm not offering 'cause I'm a nice guy or whatever, that's Gyro's job. You just happen to have a band and cost literally nothing."

Jotaro turns his head. "Who said anything about being free?"

"Your car being fixed right now by the best of the best says you're free."

Jotaro huffs smoke from his open lips. "Yeah, alright."

The garage is silent for a while and they hear nothing except for Gyro's humming, moving on from one nondescript song to another, and the tiny clanks of equipment on car parts none of them could really name. Johnny looks at all of them for a little while. "What're you guys called anyways, 'Jotaro's Three Stooges'?"

Jotaro takes a long drag of his cigarette before looking for an ashtray, finding none and stomping it out with his foot instead. Johnny's "you'd better pick that up fast, I'll run you over, ask Gyro" is ignored. Jotaro looks at Kakyoin for half a second, but Kakyoin's looking at the head of dirty blond hair sticking out of the front of their car, fascinated by the metallic clinking and colourful curses in between soft hums of notes of music.

"Stardust Crusaders." He laughs a little, a soft bark in the cold room. "We're Stardust Crusaders."


	5. Say you, say me

_December 24, 1983._

It takes Kakyoin about two seconds to notice their yard is covered in a fresh blanket of snow. He moves his green curtains aside fully and moves to look, his breath coming out in white puffs. The sky is grey and splotchy, his mother's purple irises are entirely snowed under, the footprints from Polnareff's heavy boots have entirely disappeared and, slightly unrelated, there's no ladder perfectly slotted under his window frame. His bare feet stick to his floorboards and underneath them he hears his mother talk to his father, who's decided to be home for Christmas.

His room is cold because he's forgotten to turn the heat on, which is, he feels, really and truly a dumb thing to do in winter, and his nose runs a little when he moves to guide his head through the hole in his sweater. He flails around for a little while trying to get his other leg into his pants and tears down some tinsel with his toes from every random place he decided to hang it. When he moves to go downstairs to see if he can slip past his parents to get himself a snack, the windows in his room look like he sat in front of them breathing at the glass, damp and all white spots and drips of water, but his room is warming up and he's looking forward to holing himself up in it until dinner.

Trudging downstairs, he gets to the juice first before his mother appears and he barely gets the chance to greet her before he's ushered into helping make baked goods for dessert, his hopes of being alone today dashed and flying out the front windows his mother's covered in spray snow. Ten minutes later he's covered in flour up to his elbows and his mother is melting butter in a pan as big as his palms, his father shovelling the half a foot of snow off their driveway, and Kakyoin feels somewhat at ease, even with his mother asking him about school in between humming Christmas carols. At half three they're still baking and he feels they might feed an entire hospital with the amount of food they're making. He huffs and kneads eggs and sugar with his knuckles. "It's fine, I'm still taking extra classes, so I'll be fine."

His mother sighs and tucks her red hairs behind her ears with the hand she's not using to slide dark chocolate around in a small tray dangling over a pan of hot water. "Oh, I know, darling, I know you will, but you spend so much time in your room nowadays!" She wipes her hands off her apron and moves to a pot of cherries to Kakyoin's left. "I _do_ worry, you know. Do you still have your desipramine?"

He eyes the cherries a little, returning to kneading the dough of what he now suspects will be a pie. He hears the garage door open and someone cleaning their boots and guesses the driveway's snow-free and his father's heading to his office. "I switched, remember? It gave me a dry mouth and made me more tired all the time. And it's only because I'm really busy. You know how teachers like piling up homework before the holidays."

"Oh, oh yes, I remember." She empties the pot of cherries in a third pan and walks around him for her gelatine leaves. "But you can always ask your father or me for help, you know that. Your father, you know, he _does_ know quite a lot, even if he doesn't look it." Kakyoin laughs softly and moves the bowl he was working on to the fridge before beginning on a new batch. He's cracking the eggs, something he never quite knows how to do perfectly, hitting the edge of his bowl too softly at first, nothing but a small crack in the shell even showing he made an effort, when his mother stops what she's doing and looks at him, biting her lip a little. He got his lips from her, the shape of it and width of them, along with his chin, and he quite likes them about himself sometimes.

"You know, if you think we're too strict with you, you can say. I know we do push you quite a lot, but we just don't want you to be reckless. Do the best you can do! But if you feel something we do isn't right, then... then you can say. " She continues heating up her cherries but her lips are still set in a light frown. "We only want what's best for you, as your parents."

Kakyoin cracks his third egg too hard and he smashes half the shell into his bowl. "Ah! F-, Oh, Hell." He fishes out the bits of shell in his bowl when his mother continues. "Maybe you're old enough to make those decisions for yourself, we think. Your father and I." She laughs a little when she sees him struggling with his eggs and moves to help. "But I'm afraid we might need some time to process you don't need us anymore."

He moves aside to let her at the bowl and rolls up his sleeves a little more when they're threatening to fall down his arms again. He opens the tap and hopes maybe the water will overpower his voice while he washes the remainder of dough off his fingers. "It's-... it's not that, mother, I-"

The doorbell interrupts what he feels might end up in another yelling match and he sighs and quickly excuses himself to open the door instead. Maybe he'd write his feelings down on a note and slide it under his parent's bedroom door and run as fast as his legs could take him, or write it on their windows in spray-on snow. He looks at the broad windows while he moves to open the door. He _might_ need a couple cans-

"You look very festive."

Kakyoin knows he's gaping, and he wishes blinking your eyes worked like the shutter of a camera. He quickly tries to dust the flour off his arms but they stay a ghostly, powdery pale and he rolls down his sleeves instead. "What-... oh my God."

Jotaro shushes him. The pompom at the end of his red cap dances a little. Kakyoin quickly closes the door halfway when he hears his mother ask who's at the door and moves to cover the rest of the opening with his body, a little useless what with Jotaro poking out over him head-and-shoulders. He feels sweat gather at his temples when he shouts back. "It's carollers!"

Jotaro huffs. "Please, like I know a single carol. It takes pain and effort to forget them every year. Polnareff told me to pick you up because he couldn't. Let's go."

Kakyoin falters. "What? Wait, where are we going?"

"Christmas." The sleeves of Jotaro's festively knitted sweater are a little over an inch too long for his arms and they flap over his palms slightly when he sighs and moves to pull Kakyoin along by his hands. Kakyoin can barely pull the door shut with his unoccupied hand before he's sliding behind Jotaro over the icy path to the road.

Jotaro's walking slightly too fast for Kakyoin to keep up and the smooth soles of his shoes slide over trampled flats of snow dangerously for a couple feet before he pulls his hand free and starts walking at his own pace. Jotaro slows down a little and falls into step next to him, and they walk in silence for a while, Jotaro's frown set on his forehead and between his eyebrows and Kakyoin swaying his arms at his sides to stay warm despite the cold afternoon. " _So_ ," he begins, drawling the vowel, " _where_ are we going? Christmas isn't a place."

Jotaro scoffs. "To where Polnareff is." The slip and slide of the sidewalk doesn't really seem to bother him and he glides forward without losing his balance, though Kakyoin misses the flurry of his long coat. "Loser has to work on Christmas eve."

Kakyoin draws up his lip for a sympathetic noise. "That's rough. So you dragged me out of my house right in front of my enthusiastically baking mother so we can...?"

"Thrash his workplace, exactly." Jotaro nods and Kakyoin grins a little as they near the shopping district. Lights hang all around and over them in patterns, criss-crossing through trees and dangling from and winding around streetlights. There's late Christmas shoppers all around them, and he's sure he's hearing Andy Williams playing from the direction of a bigger store's tacky nativity window display. Jotaro suddenly turns a corner and enters a short alleyway. His voice bounces off the walls before they reach Kakyoin's ears. "He works at this bar, O'Malley's, real Irish place, but we call it Paddy's, just to piss him off."

"Ah, I see."

Jotaro turns another corner and Kakyoin follows him a couple paces until they stop at a place so unmistakably Irish Kakyoin wonders if the leprechaun puppets in the windowsill shouldn't be dancing jigs instead of sitting still and staring glumly at the Christmas festivities outside. The large wooden sign with the pub's name on it is entirely decorated in four-leaf clovers and the golden lettering glints even though there's no sunlight for it to be glinting _in_. Kakyoin decides he likes it, even more so when they step in and the place is warm, toasty even, dimly lit and absolutely covered in dark cherry woods. Jotaro spots Polnareff first, chatting amicably with everyone at the bar as he hands a customer a massive pitcher of dark red liquid, and he and Kakyoin sit next to Avdol, who had the mercy of being free from pre-holiday labour and was already nursing his complementary glühwein.

"Ah, you guys, all here. I'm touched!" Polnareff slides their way dangerously balancing two drinks on a single palm. "Some safe, alcohol-free festivity drinks for you, my dear pals who are here to support me in these dark times of toiling nine to six."

Avdol downs the last of his drink. "You totally forced me here."

"Free drinks, _dear._ "

"And a happy New Year." Avdol steals Kakyoin's mug and takes a sip too large for his mouth. It's still steaming when he sets it back down, and grimaces. "Man, I'm always so aware I'm technically the only adult out of us. It's like hanging out with babies, I swear. _Jean_ , please, the good stuff."

"Whatever you say, grandpa." Jotaro grabs his own mug and takes a swig. Probably scalding his tongue too, Kakyoin thinks.

Kakyoin finally sits down, next to Jotaro and on a stool a little too high for him, hooking his ankles around the legs of it and hoisting himself up with his arms, and grabs his pitcher with both hands to warm them. Polnareff quickly disappears again after handing them their drinks and moves expertly across the room carrying a tray of glasses and mugs of different sizes carrying alcohol of different colours. John Lennon and Yoko are singing War is Over from the massive jukebox somehow placed at the far end wall right in between the two bathroom doors. Avdol leaves for the bathroom grumbling this is the seventh time he's been blessed with the tune in the short time he's been there, and a group of people at the corner start crooning along, arms around shoulders and words slurred.

"Dude, Avdol, mom keeps asking if you'll come too."

Avdol winces as he walks from the toilet door back to his seat. "Man, you know I can't say no to Holly."

He sees the back of Polnareff's head nod solemnly while he's cleaning out pitchers. "Her big beautiful blue peepers."

"Just say eyes when you mean eyes, man." Jotaro empties his second mug of mulled wine, something the owner's apparently ordered too much of and is desperately handing customers for free. "Kakyoin, you coming?"

Kakyoin splutters and nearly inhales an orange slice. "To what?"

Polnareff smacks his palms into the bar and leans forward. "Christmas! _Christmas_ , man. Every Joestar alive together in one room. It's legendary. I couldn't go last year but I heard _this_ guy's sister _decked_ Johnny over the green Jell-O." He sighs wistfully. "Me being a poor, sad orphan boy, Holly invites me every year but even if she didn't, I'd pay big bucks to watch that, uh... that little blond man interact with your grandpa's _huge,_ beautiful Italian guy again. He's _so_ small, that boy. Looks like Caesar's trying to take his lunch money."

"Dude, you're officially uninvited." Jotaro moves to fetch a handful of quarters from his wallet and walks up to the jukebox, punching in numbers a little rougher than the poor machine deserved. "Besides, I told Jolyne the Jell-O's mine this year."

"Man, I'd absolutely _love_ to see you try. Remember when she used that jump-rope to strangle Gyro over the last slice of apple pie? I love her, man, but she's brutal. She's like Pac-Man when the food hits the table."

Kakyoin imagines for a full minute a small girl with pigtails and Jotaro's face pounding her chest before jumping four feet into the air and body-slamming Gyro into the ground with her elbow. Avdol snickers into his umpteenth mug of wine, his cheeks dusted with red, though hardly noticeable. Jotaro scoffs. "Both the pie and the Jell-O are mine. I'm switching strategies."

Polnareff chuckles and loads his serving tray up with another round of glasses and mugs before he hoists it up by the palm and dances around the counter again. "I'll be cashing in on my front row tickets."

They're all quiet for a while after this, drinking in silence while Polnareff twirls around customers and receives well-wishes for the new year.

Kakyoin holds eye contact with a leprechaun doll dressed halfway as the good old Saint Nick for quite some time.

Polnareff thinks about the final half hour of his shift.

Jotaro smirks when the jukebox clicks and starts its next performance.

Avdol leans his head desperately into his arms when it begins another round of Happy Christmas, War is Over.

* * *

"Why do I have to sit in the back? The seat is sticky, man! You can't do this to me, not on this, the evening of our good, holy man Nick."

It's well past six and completely dark out, save for the light coming from the store window installations and the billions of tiny string lights covering every outside surface. Avdol turns a corner carefully, driving through the narrow streets. "Are you regretting that decision of leaving one of your uncapped cokes in the back seat yesterday yet?"

"I put a seatbelt on it for protection's sake and _also_ road safety because I love _all_ my children and it totally flunked out! You need to get that checked, buddy." He pulls a face and tries to get himself as close as he can to the door without touching the faux leather seat cover.

Jotaro rolls the passenger's seat window down and leans his arm out. Avdol's cranked up the heat in the van to the point of it being nearly unbearable, but Kakyoin's working on storing some of it for when they inevitably have to get out of their oven, wriggling his fingers from where's he's stuffed them in the armpits of his jumper. The cold from Jotaro's open front window hits Polnareff more than it does him but he still shivers a little from the slight but sudden difference in temperature. His teeth chatter a little. "You know, I'm pretty sure they don't have those in there to keep your drinks upright."

"Tch... pff, _pfffft,_ well! Then maybe we should invest in something that _does_ do this, because my pants may be cheap but my _ass_ is not and I won't have it stuck to-"

There's a deafening bang as soon as Avdol turns on his turn signal and Kakyoin blesses every God he knows Avdol is calm enough to turn the corner and park his van calmly by the sidewalk. When white smoke comes off the engine in big clouds, Jotaro hurries to roll his window back up. Polnareff undoes his seatbelt and moves to open his door. "Avdol, man, white smoke means it's probably the coolant. Nothing too big, but..."

"Yeah, I know." Avdol sighs and rests his arms on the steering wheel, leaning forward a little so he can look out the front window. "Jotaro, better call Holly. We're like, a full hour walk away from your place, at least."

Jotaro groans. "Dude, I left my cell at home. It's not like I can really carry it around anywhere. It's the size of my head. My pockets are the size of a quarter of my hand."

Polnareff appears in the door opening. "Hoser, just buy a bag. It's not uncool to have a bag. Being able to carry stuff is hip now."

Kakyoin has nearly disappeared into his sweater trying to keep warm, sitting on his hands and holding his knees closely together. "Does this mean we're also some two hours away from _my house_?"

"Sorry dude, no dice." Polnareff climbs back into the car, his bare arms a little red from the breeze outside. The inside of their rapidly cooling car isn't hot enough to stop the red from spreading and soon Polnareff's cheeks and ears are glowing too. Jotaro leans his elbow on the side of the car door and leans his head on his palm. "Might as well start walking."

* * *

"Did honestly none of us think to bring coats at all?"

Polnareff holds his biceps and whines. "You dickweed, Jotaro, you know I have this beautiful wool one and I know you left after me and saw me forget it at O'Malley's. I don't forgive _or_ forget. Except for my coat. Like, literally all the time." Kakyoin and Avdol trudge behind them while they bicker, Kakyoin fearing his teeth might chatter too much to make the words come out at all, and Avdol too content listening. It's much darker now than when they left the bar, and they're walking through a neighbourhood Kakyoin doesn't recognise in the dark. He stares at the strings of fairy lights, focusing and defocusing his eyes, making the orbs blur and dance a little as he walks. The streets are nearly empty of Christmas shoppers and there's no colourful decorations or shop displays, only closed curtains and dark windows.

Kakyoin thinks a little of his parents, he thinks because his stomach feels hollow and completely empty of Christmas dinner, an important family meal his father would have eaten at his desk anyway, but tries to shake the thought. He's still thinking of his past three Christmas dinners alone in his room when he crashes into Polnareff's broad back. "Man, no offense but I'm hungry." Polnareff looks at Avdol over his shoulder. "You know how I feel about physical exercise."

Jotaro sighs. "I hate to say it but... me too. And I can hear a million drinks sloshing around in your stomach, dude. Weird."

Kakyoin opens his mouth, his chattering teeth sounding like tiny fireworks in the empty, silent street. He closes it again. Avdol looks at him for a moment before taking his hands from his robes and motioning them along. "Kakyoin's right, it's late. It's late, but the convenience store at the corner here should still be good."

It's a short walk and the bright neon lights only take them a couple seconds of blinking to adjust to, Avdol and Polnareff entering the twenty-four hour shop first, immediately spotting the coffee dispenser near the sandwiches and salads. Jotaro holds the door until Kakyoin steps inside too and goes for the bread and crisps. Kakyoin grabs a carton of orange juice and tucks it under his elbow.

Polnareff stands by the dessert cooling excitedly motioning Avdol over with his other arm, nearly sloshing his coffee all over the recently cleaned floor tiles. "Dude, look!" He turns his head every way it will go until he spots Jotaro shaking an egg salad sandwich in front of Kakyoin's face. "Jotaro, dude, they have the red _and_ the green Jell-O cups here! There's like, enough for all of us, but if you did want to fight over one I _would_ -"

A pack of salted crisps hits his nose before he registers it whirling at him. "Don't forget your root vegetables." Jotaro stacks several packs of sandwiches in his arms and uses his fingers to clutch at as many crisp packets as he can.

Polnareff downs his coffee in a single swig and quickly takes as many different varieties of Jell-O in his arms as he can hold. "Aren't potatoes a stem vegetable?"

"Man, _what_?" Kakyoin figures since Jotaro's arms are too full to throw a second crisp packet he'll have to do the honours and lobs it perfectly at Polnareff's chest.

They leave a small trail of candy on their way out and Polnareff has to run back to beg for a plastic bag, but eventually they leave with their arms full of food, Kakyoin juggling several cartons of juice and a pack of disposable cups barely held by the tips of his fingers. He gratefully dumps them all when they find a single picnic table in what he's sure is supposed to be a park but is more something like a couple square feet of grass and a frozen pond the size of a puddle.

"So what about that gig, huh?" Polnareff takes the cup of apple juice Kakyoin offers him and sits closer to Avdol on his side of the table. "We have a setlist we are going to _nail_ entirely, sans creepy murder songs _and_ we practiced and we sound crucial as hell. Pumped?"

Avdol shrugs his overcoat off his shoulders and drapes it over Polnareff's, not too carefully and nearly covering his eyes with it too, but Polnareff takes it and quickly sticks his arms in the large sleeves before the heat of it disappears. "If anything," Avdol wraps his beige robe a little closer around himself. "I think maybe we ought to think a little about getting _you_ some new clothes. Fit the band's image, and all."

"Woah! When did we decide on an image? If anything, these two," he flaps his arm at Jotaro and Kakyoin at the other side of the table wildly, " _these_ two have to be more up to date! School uniforms? AC/DC is very last decade. Jotaro, man, you're like, half a hessian already."

"Don't. Don't _ever._ Never again... say these words to me."

Kakyoin grabs a couple of muffins from a stack of them and tries to find a blueberry one in a haystack of chocolate and vanilla. "Well, I personally feel very comfortable and I know you're too _cool_ for school but you _do_ own a uniform."

"Yeah!" Polnareff folds his arms, a striking resemblance to a Sith Lord, perched on his side of the park bench. "Yeah I do, and I'll wear it when they bury me in it next to my beautiful maman because it's the only suit I own! Also, bag on Avdol more, please and thank you. He's not wearing his uniform either! Blatant favouritism."

"Well, no, but Avdol's look is amazing and timeless." Kakyoin picks at chunks of muffin, placing each one carefully on his tongue before closing his mouth. Avdol hums and nods.

Polnareff laughs and tries to throw bits of his bagel at Kakyoin's face whenever he opens his lips for his own food. "Wow, dude, our little baby's all grown up! Man, isn't it weird we've only known Kaks for like, what, twenty days? You're a brother to me, truly."

Avdol chuckles. "Man, I've known you for three years and I still feel like I'm babysitting half the time. You blew up our washing machine."

"Yeah, well, you loved it." He nearly elbows Avdol's chicken salad off his plastic fork trying to get to a pack of sandwiches. Jotaro quietly munches on an apple Kakyoin grabbed off the rack last-minute.

"You know, guys," Polnareff pulls the wrapping plastic off a sandwich without really looking what's on it, "This is like, way sentimental for me to say and don't let me make it a habit or whatever, but I'm totally grateful for all of you, man. You're kinda my family now, so that's cool."

"Yeah." Jotaro bites through the centre, grimaces and spits out a seed. "Me too, I guess."

Kakyoin huddles a little closer to Jotaro and suddenly feels incredibly warm despite the negative temperature.

"You know, my Christmases are usually pretty lonely and weird, but..." He clutches at his cup of grape juice. "But this one isn't, somehow, so, thanks for kidnapping me in broad daylight, guys."

Polnareff seems to think of something and is far away for a handful of seconds before he smiles at Kakyoin and takes a bite from his egg salad sandwich. "No problem, man. Nobody should have to celebrate Christmas alone."

An hour later, it starts snowing.


	6. Always on my mind

_December 31, 1983._

"My _God_ , Polnareff, I'm sure your hair looks terrible as ever, _please_ , it's been half an hour!"

Despite Jotaro cupping his hands around his mouth to up his volume from Deep and Dark to Booming, Kakyoin has doubts about it reaching the sixth floor. Jotaro tsk's and mutters, shoving his palms deep inside his pockets. "Oh yeah, he heard me." He looks up at a lone, open window and raises his voice again. "He heard me!"

Kakyoin blows at his hands feebly, tucking his long coat a little closer to his chest. He tries to clear his throat without aggravating the ache in it and looks around; he's never been in the east-end of town, and so far, it looks pretty abandoned, safe for passing groups of children and teenagers and several cats Jotaro's tried to become friendly with, regardless of the cold sweep of their tails. He sighs. "Say something nice, maybe. Like how much you love his personality, or something about his split ends looking _very_ alive!"

"When I'm dead in the ground." Jotaro huffs, and his breath hangs visible in the air for several seconds. Kakyoin tuts and stomps his foot, where it sinks into the several inches of snow, past the edges of and into his shoes, soaking his socks. He feels regret. "Jotaro, it's cold."

Jotaro checks the neighbourhood for witnesses. "No, duh, man."

" _And_ ," Kakyoin steps closer to Jotaro and lowers his voice, "if another group of kids comes by and dumps firecrackers in that trashcan I'm going to commit a murder most, uh, _grody._ "

Jotaro almost laughs. "Alright, yeah, okay. I might have a plan. It's a little illegal."

Kakyoin eyes a group of three boys huddled together near the alleyway suspiciously and sighs. "Tell me."

Jotaro looks up at the teenagers quickly and snorts. He points to the side of the building, and Kakyoin follows his arm past the tip of his finger and to a shoddy fire escape ladder barely attached to and running up the crumbling wall of the flat. Jotaro looks at him and raises his brow. " _That's_ one idea."

" _What?_ I mean, is there another idea? Do you have one? Another one?"

"No, it's just the one." Jotaro scouts the street again briefly and briskly walks up to the stairs, motioning for Kakyoin to follow. In the silence that falls while Kakyoin watches Jotaro stalk over to the building and grab the rusty handrail, he very faintly hears _Super Trouper_ from the open window he thinks leads to Polnareff's bedroom.

"Kakyoin, give me your leg."

Kakyoin stops walking a single step away from Jotaro, who's cupping his hands in front of himself and crouching slightly. "Sorry, what?"

Jotaro huffs. "Give me your leg. It's too high up, I'll boost you."

"You'll launch me up and over the building, you mean. Why can't you go first and let me in later?"

Jotaro sighs again, this time like Kakyoin's the biggest fool he's ever laid eyes on. "Because he won't let _me_ in. Now, please put your _foot_ on my _hands_ so I can skyrocket you up this ladder."

"Reassuring." Kakyoin pulls his leg from the snow with a wet noise and a lot of suction and puts his dripping shoe on the palms of Jotaro's hands, where he's crossed his fingers to link them. He's not skyrocketed up the ladder, but he does scramble for purchase a little higher up than he likes himself being, ten or so rungs and several feet up from the bottom. He hears Jotaro grab for the ladder and pull himself up just when he's put his feet securely on one of the bottom rungs. He quickly climbs up the next few so Jotaro's head doesn't collide with his ass.

"Polnareff, you French piece of shit! Open up!" Jotaro tries to reach out to bash his fist into the thin glass but misses, nearly hitting Kakyoin in the hip. The window swings open dramatically before Polnareff sticks out his arm, risking his head a couple seconds after. "Ah! Jotaro! I knew that could only be _your_ pleasant, soothing voice at this early hour."

Jotaro looks like he's having trouble not using Kakyoin to bridge the gap between him and his friend. "It's two in the afternoon, dickweed, we were outside for forty minutes."

Polnareff sticks his shoulders out into the cold too, so he can see Kakyoin clutching his side of the ladder for dear life. "Ah, Kakyoin, my friend! I didn't hear you, I was doing my morning workout."

" _Two_ in the afternoon, man. It's _two._ "

Kakyoin dares to release the clutch his right hand has on the ladder and flaps it wildly at the window. "Polnareff, can you please let us in? This thing _moves_." He swings aside a little to demonstrate, and the ladder creaks loudly, detaching from the wall a little before crashing back into it.

"Ah! Climb up a bit more and you can stick your leg in." Polnareff's sticking out his arms before Kakyoin can loudly voice his complaints. Jotaro punches him in the butt to get him to move, and he does, swinging his leg in the direction of the windowsill before he can think about how he's hanging a dizzying amount of feet from solid ground, feeling it connect with the bottom of it and curling the arch of his foot desperately. He grabs Polnareff's outstretched arm and uses his other foot to hop as far as he can, and before he knows it, he's being pulled head first into a surprisingly minimalist living room. When Jotaro ducks in, Kakyoin's still gasping for breath, heart going a mile a minute. "You're a dick for making me do that, but _merci_."

"Ah, _de rien_ , _de rien_." Polnareff moved to stop his cassette player from blasting more of _Material Girl_.

Jotaro huffed. "Kakyoin you pretentious shit – the only French words you know are yes, no, thank you and _menage à trois_."

"I learned! I learned more!"

Polnareff touched his chest. " _Pour moi_? Kakyoin, my dear friend, I'd do anything for you too, truly anything."

Kakyoin punches him in the arm just enough to make his bicep bounce a little. "Polnareff, I'd trade you for a pack of gum."

Polnareff laughs, a loud and infectious cackle. "Dude, gum is ace, so I'm not even mad."

Jotaro fingers the loose edge of a Cyndi Lauper poster, the lady herself donning a colourful scarf Kakyoin knows is too flimsy to be for anything but fashion, staring glitter-lidded at some point on the opposite wall. "Avdol still at work? Are we meeting him there?"

Polnareff whirls around and lightly smacks his fingers away from the poster, lest he taint Cyndi with mortal fingertips. "I know you're so eager to have the gang together to case on my entire wardrobe and ritually torch it in the mall alley but I can buy my own _damn_ clothes, pardon my French."

Kakyoin sits heavily on the burgundy sofa and promptly sinks down so far his legs lift off the ground an inch and the springs poke him in both his thighs _and_ in his ass cheeks. "Alright, you can't ironically ask people to pardon your French anymore. Forbidden."

"Avdol won't let me look at his philosophy notes for months if I let him miss out on this, man." Jotaro folds his arms and leans on one leg, already familiar enough with the apartment to know not to try any chairs. "I need those notes."

Polnareff clasps his hands together with a loud smack, expression triumphant. "You can have my notes! All of them."

"Dude, you hardly _make_ any." Jotaro frowns, and Kakyoin's surprised he's able to tell his default frown from this one. "You remember all that shit like some wizard of d'Autrecourt and all the teachers love you, you shithead. Offer _not_ accepted."

Kakyoin considers how many wrinkles Jotaro'll have before he's thirty. He tries to pull himself from the prickly pit he's made in the sofa before it takes him to the other side of the mortal realm, and moves to stand next to Jotaro and mimics his folded arms. "Might as well burn what you're wearing along with the rest of it, Polnareff."

"Underwear too," Jotaro adds.

"Ha _ha,_ hardy har _har_." Polnareff moves past them to grab a t-shirt to wear instead of his exercise shirt and changes in a flash of a second, the fabric a little loose on him. He moves past them to the front door and grabs his keys from a lacquered bowl filled with odd trinkets and gadgets. Kakyoin thinks at least half of them are laser pointers he suspects Polnareff collects in there, along with shiny stones and bits of pens that clearly don't serve their purpose anymore. Kakyoin follows Polnareff when he grabs his coat and opens the door for them, eager to use a proper exit for once.

* * *

The mall the local youth frequent isn't big or spectacular, but has a cozy comic book store with big comfortable chairs and an arcade Kakyoin's grown to love, and so, despite the tacky banners and peeling paint, it has a place in his heart. Polnareff loves it for its milkshakes, Jotaro likes the pet store. Avdol is indifferent, as long as they pay him, and he looks it when they approach his small fortune teller's booth in the middle aisle of the hallway. He sets aside the tarot cards he was arranging, blowing out his candles and clearing up his table. "Thank God, if I had to tell one more tourist they were in for financial misfortune yet luck in love, I'd have to start eating the incense." He gets up when he's done, table tucked under his arm, and eyes Polnareff's chest suspiciously. " _And_ you're wearing my shirt."

Polnareff shrugs. "They're threatening to torch _my_ clothes. Do you _want_ me naked?" He smirks. "Don't answer that. It's a given."

Avdol turns to Kakyoin and Jotaro a little too fast and _accidentally_ hits Polnareff in the side with his folding table. Polnareff theatrically crumbles to the floor, clutching his ribs and Jotaro snorts and punches him in the leg when he inevitably sticks it up in the air to add to the drama of the moment. Avdol snickers, looking down while they slowly make their way to the rows of clothing stores within their budget, ignoring Polnareff's soft whinnying behind them. "Any other plans for the evening? Dinner at ours? Then we can do our pathetic bus trip to the bar together."

Kakyoin laughs a little. "Sure, I've no plans." They round the corner to the most visually bland store of the lot of them and Jotaro silently holds the door for them, pushing Polnareff in with the heel of his foot firmly pressed into Polnareff's asscheek when he falters at the doorstep. "None here either, and I could always go for Pol's bland-ass mac and cheese."

"My mac and cheese is _not_ bland! I have a sensitive palate."

"You don't know what _salt_ is." Jotaro follows them to the back of the store where Polnareff manages to find the first rack of only black t-shirts. He grabs a couple in his size that to Kakyoin all look the same and tuts. "I'm _sure_ Holly's cooking is infinitely better than mine, but I _try,_ pardieu. Can you hold these, _dear_?" He shoves the stack of shirts in Avdol's folded arms and he takes them automatically. "Maybe Avdol should cook us some of his _famous_ noodles à la water. Black shirts are acceptable dress code, yes? Or do you want me more _blitz_?"

" _Seasoned_ noodles à la water, Jean."

"Black shirt is acceptable." Kakyoin interrupts and pushes a pair of bright blue leather pants into his chest. "And you're allowed _one_ pair of wacky pants. Choose wisely."

"Only one pair. I swear, this is exactly what a police state is like." Polnareff shakes his head and holds up several leather pants way too tight to be comfortable, lamenting his loss of rights while rifling through a stack of technicolour flannel ones too, for the sake of it.

"I'm claiming these." Jotaro holds up a terrible pair, full snake print, beige, looking so absolutely serious Kakyoin can't tell whether he's really wanting to spend money on them. "Also, creepy store clerk at two o'clock."

Polnareff shoots a quick look over Avdol's shoulder. "Very slimy, very suspicious. Good hair but looks like he'd punch a child." After a moment of consideration, he replaces the blue leather pants in his arms with a wildly striped pair and puts them on the pile of t-shirts he's made Avdol into. "And we've been spotted."

"Can I help you gentlemen?"

Polnareff whirls on him, first taking in the long toes of his tacky brown shoes, then his shoulder-long, slicked back hair. "Ah, mister..." He peers at the man's nametag, squinting like he's having trouble with the loopy handwriting. "Dan. Mister Dan. Steely, if I may. Mister Steely. I'm looking for a jacket that says I'm having a good time and I'm not a try-hard. Flash. _Icy_. You relate?"

The man grimaces. "Not... quite. But I'll see what I can do." He bows, the ends of his long locks nearly touching the hems of Polnareff's joggers, his upper back and shoulders bending more than his midriff, making him into an overgrown flesh-and-blood candy cane, before he straightens and leaves, lips thin, back straight again. Polnareff laughs and grabs his pants and a couple of the shirts off Avdol's arms. "Kak, my man, I saw a pair of _very_ tight jeans of that green colour you like that would do your _divine_ bum justice, I swear."

"Flattery is getting you absolutely nowhere, Polnareff. Get in the fitting room." Polnareff is right, the jeans _would_ look really good on him, and he wordlessly takes them in his arms, joining Polnareff in the fitting cubicles. Polnareff's voice is muffled in the stall next to his, probably while stuck in one of the shirts he's fitting. "You sure we don't need at least one of those wack ass corny hats or, like, assless chaps, to even be allowed into the bar? I heard the cowboy crowd is way liberal with the whole glass throwing and, uh, generally being juiced _as_." His voice grows louder, his head finally free from its black cotton prison. "I'd rather fit in, you know. Without having to carry a holster. I don't think guns'd be my style. I like to think I'm more of a swords and fencing man myself. Swords are cool."

"I doubt we'd be shot on the spot if we walked in without spurs, Jean, honestly," comes Avdol's disembodied voice from the stall right from Kakyoin. "Just smile and nod and keep your mouth as shut as you possibly can."

Kakyoin hears Polnareff make a small offended noise, but thinks he's too focused on changing his pants to comment more. Kakyoin buttons the green jeans and admires them in the tall mirror built into the side of his cubicle. "Either way," he muses out loud, "this could be our chance to make ourselves a little known locally."

Jotaro scoffs loudly enough they can all hear, despite him being several stalls over. "Not that I wouldn't _love_ for every cowboy hick in this town to ask for our tapes but I really think our big shot at this whole thing is that much anticipated _Battle of the Bands_."

Avdol hums his assent. "Even if we don't win I'm sure that'd give us some attention, at the very least."

Polnareff gets out of his stall, the door banging into Kakyoin's stall. "Yeah, but that ain't till _september._ Also, what's with that'even if we don't win' talk, Avdol, my man! We are inarguably _the_ single best band this continent's ever seen. I don't dare say shit about Europe, but _this_ one? This contest is in the _bag_ , so we gotta focus on _tonight_. Anyone know any Johnny cash?"

Jotaro exist his stall just when Kakyoin changes back to his own pants. "Dude, when you go all American with your French ass accent? It unnerves me."

Kakyoin opens his stall door and nearly walks into Avdol. "I once tried to convert _Ring of Fire_ to synth sheet music but it sounds... quite terrible, actually. Let's not try any Cash. We'd infuriate the masses and they'd tie us to the mechanical bull or shoot at our feet. I can't dance, Polnareff. They'd shoot my shoes."

Polnareff reaches out to clasp his shoulder. "Dude, that was way specific. If you need us to protect you from the all-western atmosphere, just say the word." He starts walking backwards in the direction of the register, his shirts and one ridiculous pair of pants slung around his shoulders. "And now, if you will excuse me, I'm going to get this creepy man to ring up my glitz pants."

Jotaro follows him, his clothes folded in a small bundle under his armpit. "We could do _Walk the Line_. I could do _Walk the Line_."

Polnareff chortles, startling the store clerk taking the tags off his pile of shirts. "Ah, mon _dieu_ , Jotaro, never thought I'd live to see you jump for the chance to sing a _country_ tune. Times truly changed when the decennium did."

Jotaro rolls his eyes and elbows Polnareff in the ribs. "Pay for your shit, hoser."

"Aye _aye_ , frontman."

It's when Jotaro is actually paying real money for the fake snake leather pants that Kakyoin realises he means to wear them. _Seriously_ , he's sure, because Jotaro is without a doubt the least ironic man he knows, with Polnareff being the highest on that scale. He considers briefly, for only a minute, maybe two, _four_ if he's being generous, how Jotaro's legs go on for miles and whether the pattern would be flattering on him or no, and somehow miraculously still manages to pay for his own jeans. If Dan, mister Steely, notices Polnareff leaves without jacket in the end, he doesn't comment.

Avdol shakes his head when they walk out and they're scouting for the next shop in their mental list of places of cheap fashion. "We had a setlist and now you want to get into _Rawhide_? This is why nobody here knows what style we're trying to play."

Jotaro grunts, and holds his hand out to grab Kakyoin's bag to hold along with his own. "Whatever, we'll just play _one_ Johnny Cash. One."

* * *

"Whatever you do, do _not_ do Johnny Cash." Gyro grabs Kakyoin's palms in his own and holds them firmly. "Do _not._ "

The Steel Ball Run is near empty when they walk in, the people in there now probably a part of a handful of loyal regular patrons, and very dimly lit. Kakyoin has to squint to be able to make out a couple of hunched forms near the bar, and isn't sure whether he actually _wants_ more people to show up for their big (small) debut.

"Of course not." He shoots Polnareff a look. "We weren't planning on it."

Gyro visibly relaxes. "Oho, good. We can't play _Ring of Fire_ anymore since a _certain someone—_ " He glares at the mechanical bull, and Kakyoin realises someone's hunched over and clutching its horns even though it's completely stationary, " _—_ chased out absolutely every single customer we had last time we did. We're not willing to take the risk with, say, _Folsom Prison Blues_ or _any_ Cash for that matter." Kakyoin nods like he understands.

"Oi, Diego!" Johnny crashes through the door next to the bar and wheels up to the bull, giving it a slap, and points his finger at the man on it when he startles. "Are you going to use that or _fuck_ the hell off? Your stench is driving out our customers."

The pile of man, Diego, mumbles something and uses the bull's neck to push himself upwards. "Fuck off Johnny, it's a free country. Play _Don McLean_ again."

"Oh no," Gyro interjects. "Dude, we're not playing shit for you. Please just use the bull, it's only a quarter."

"Gyro, _no_!" Johnny whips his head back to Diego, who moves his hand to grab for his wallet. " _No,_ you _— no_. No, Diego, please leave, it's a big night. My nephew's here with his band to play y'all some shit tunes and you're not ordering _shit_ and taking up the bull and _—_ _please_ kindly fuck the _fuck_ off." He throws up his hands and closes his eyes, taking a deep breath. "You _always_ pull this shit, I swear, but not tonight, Lord, not tonight."

Gyro turns back to Kakyoin when Diego pulls out a quarter and pushes it in the slot near the bull's side, Johnny shrieking in frustration. "See, this is why we can't play Cash. Or Freebird. Lynyrd Skynyrd is _way_ out."

Polnareff moves to stand next to Kakyoin and takes his eyes off the scene of Johnny trying to pull a man off a mechanical bull by only his leg. "We understand. We're totally prepared for all sorts of shit. I've kind of always wanted to be glassed by someone."

Gyro frowns. "Uh, alright? I'm not sure what kind of concert you're expecting to give, but I don't think you're about to be, uh, _glassed_. Though I'm sure Johnny would oblige if you asked him kindly." Polnareff looks vaguely disappointed, and Kakyoin doesn't know how to feel about it. "We've everything arranged to make your concert as safe as possible. Got Mountain Tim there to keep an eye out." He points at the back of one of the people at the bar.

Polnareff slings his arm around Kakyoin's shoulder before Avdol moves to take it off. "Fuckin' _A_ , man! That's a little like having our own private sherriff, huh?"

Johnny joins them, looking faintly sweaty and slightly red in the face. "Mountain Tim? He _is_ our private sheriff. Security guard, more like, but he insists on the whole _country official_ bit. He's got the rope and the badge and everything. Hot Pants is more of a mace kinda girl, though, so don't try any shit."

Polnareff whistles.

"Any other rules?" Jotaro speaks up from somewhere behind Kakyoin. "I'm a law-abiding individual and all."

Johnny glares at him. "No alcohol, _no_ free drinks—" He side-eyes Gyro, who looks like a man caught red-handed next to the cookie jar. "—and I'm taking care of the new paint on your van. That's not a rule, it's a statement. It looks like shit. Gyro's replacing your engine."

"I hope you'll accept that as payment for the gig," Gyro adds. "Sorry about not looking at it right last time. Truly underestimated how bad a shape she was in, your van, but we're giving her a total one-over this time, so no worries, _sì_?"

Avdol nods gratefully. Jotaro grunts, but Kakyoin supposes he does that often enough for his cousin to know what that means. Johnny moves backwards and leads them to a small stage set up in the corner at the opposite end of the bar. "Here's where you'll be for the rest of the night. If you need a drink, just give us a shout."

Polnareff climbs up the tiny wooden steps and steps back to where a drum set's already been set up. It's not his own, too bulky to carry over now the van's temporarily out of use, but it looks quite nice, though Kakyoin has to admit he knows next to nothing about what makes a proper drum kit. Polnareff looks pleased, at least, and sits down with a cheerful shout of "one apple juice, please, Gyro, my man!" Jotaro clambers up after Avdol, the bass and a keyboard set up on either side of the drum kit with Jotaro's microphone and guitar stand in the middle, up front.

It's quite a while and a lot of pint glasses filled to the brim with apple juice later before people start filling up the empty seats in the bar. By the time it's nearly packed, Kakyoin finds his hands sweating and his throat a little tight with the anxiety he recognises from class presentations. He looks ahead, trying not to stare at any patrons, and accidentally catches Jotaro's eye. Jotaro nods at him, looking completely collected, and Kakyoin's stomach drops to his boots. If Jotaro can look this calm when in shake leather pants, Kakyoin hasn't a chance.

From the bar, Johnny gives them a look and a thumbs up. Gyro brings Polnareff his last apple juice.

When Polnareff raises his arms to count them down to their first song of the evening, Kakyoin can do nothing but breathe and stare into the bright lights Gyro's made sure are aimed perfectly at them. He counts dust particles.

He hears Avdol begin to play and raises his fingers to the keys, waiting for his cue.

Jotaro opens his mouth and sings.

Kakyoin thinks he might die.


	7. Blue monday

__January 5, 1984.__

"He said my pants were __proper__ , Jotaro. That's a good thing. He __loved__ them!" He throws a set of dice they picked off a Dungeons and Dragons set and moves his small dog across the board. "That's a natural twenty, and yes, I __would__ like to purchase Station West, giving me a station in every single direction, and therefore, your asses."

Jotaro grabs a handful of nuts from the bowl balanced precariously on Kakyoin's knee and shoves them halfway down his throat. " _ _Gyro__ saying he loves your pants isn't a compliment, dipstick. He wears those vests with the fringes on 'em."

"Those are _ _cool as shit.__ And I'm marking this as the day I heard you say 'dipstick'."

"I said dip _ _shit__ , skeezer."

Polnareff smirks and takes a long swig of his Fanta. "I heard a 'stick' in there. Kak? You heard this, right?"

Kakyoin looks up from where he's moving his thimble and dreading his eventual trek through the forest of Avdol's hotels. "Uh."

"That's a yes!"

Jotaro bends forward to throw the dice and does so with enough force to launch them off the table and into the floral carpet. "That's a __twenty__."

"It's a twelve, and your tiny ship's crew owes me 120,000 dollars." Avdol grins and holds out his palm, wiggling his fingers until Jotaro grunts and slaps half his collected funds into Avdol's fingers. Avdol exchanges his handful of ten dollar bills for two fifties and moves to grab the die. "And I want four more hotels."

Jotaro tsk's and grabs the small red plastic pieces from the box. "Thought you didn't believe in materialism and capitalism and all that shit."

"I don't," Avdol smiles and wipes his green houses off the board. "But I love fake money and kicking your ass in something other than __Galaga__ , even if it's ultimate Monopoly, high speed edition."

Polnareff flings a handful of wrapped peanut butter candies at Avdol's chest, his aim so poor some bounce off the ceiling. Avdol squawks but grabs one off his lap and unwraps it.

"And that's what happens when you're a little bitch." Polnareff rolls the dice straight into Jotaro's main street—upending his houses and two hotels—in a poorly disguised attempt at cheating. "And I say this with the utmost respect to women, of course. Most notably the beautiful blonde lady who provided us with these delicious goods."

"You stay away from my mom, you piece of shit French troll doll," Jotaro mutters, shoving his game pieces back onto the board.

"You're just mad I won't sell you Vermont Avenue."

Kakyoin tuts. "Actually, I think it's because you slipped marijuana in Holly's brownie batter."

"There's nothing that can't be improved with a little Mary-Jay, fellas. A wise lesson from an elder."

Jotaro looks like he's close to upending their customised monopoly board and spilling the lot of five dollar bills in free parking across the room like leaves. "I can think of a couple things."

"Exactly, nothing. And yes, I watched your beautiful mom eat these special grass-infused baked goods because I _ _care__. She is like my __own__ mother, and were she still with us, Lord rest her soul, I would have done the same to her."

Kakyoin finishes off his fanta bottle with a flourish. "Please, someone, roll this die, I have cash to lose and bankruptcy to declare."

Jotaro is too busy flipping Polnareff off to use his hands for anything else. Kakyoin rolls his eyes and punches him in the shoulder with the same hand he's using to clutch a handful of Bananarama. Jotaro curses and Kakyoin gestures at the bowl perched in his lap. "Jotaro, relax and have some nuts."

Polnareff's uncontrolled laughter and the muffled thump as he rolls off his beanbag and hits the floor are drowned out by the steady, obnoxious ringing from the black postman's bag Jotaro's flung in the corner of the garage. He gets up, one hand still up, middle finger pointing unwaveringly at the shaking pile on the floor, and yanks his phone from in between lecture notes. "What."

Kakyoin watches how in a couple seconds, Jotaro's scowl disappears when his eyebrows raise.

"I'm a busy man, dude. Just give me a time." Jotaro sticks his hand down his pant pocket in an attempt to look suave, Kakyoin thinks, but it looks like he's digging frantically around for his keys instead, wiggling his fingers against the seams, which is decidedly uncool. "Sure, we'll get there. Or try to — the horse-drawn carriage is in for repairs again."

"Ha, ha, I get it, the van's ancient!" Avdol flicks an empty sprite can at Jotaro's feet, and he makes no attempts to dodge it. It bounces off the toes of his shoes and rolls anticlimactically towards the garage door.  
"You got instruments over there?" Polnareff sits up at this, fingers tapping away at his knees in anticipation. "That's fine, he'll bring his. Yeah, yeah, whatever, we'll see you there, don't get all sensitive on me, man. Bye."

He sits on the beanbag Polnareff previously occupied and slung his legs over in a half-attempt to get back up, squishing Polnareff's calves and making the beanbag sigh. Polnareff stares enough for his eyes to practically bore a new hole in Jotaro's skull before Jotaro responds. He makes a small, noncommittal noise and tries to lean back into a backrest that's not there. "We have a gig."

Polnareff whoops and attempts to pull his legs from underneath Jotaro's thighs. "For real? Man, I haven't even washed my one solid, approved gig outfit yet."

He nods and leans to the left so Polnareff can free himself. "My uncle, he… recommended us to a friend of his. We're playing in some __douchey__ bar at a douchey poetry recital."

" _ _Dude__. What's wrong with poetry? Language of the heart!" Polnareff rolls over and clamors up to take up Jotaro's previous spot on the sofa next to Kakyoin. Kakyoin nods.

"Yeah, Jotaro. I know the best you do with words is 'roses are red, I'll punch you in the head,' but poetry can be quite moving."

"I get you a gig and all I get is mockery and anguish." Jotaro reaches in his pocket a little crookedly, legs folded up too much to be able to from his position too close to the floor, but manages to extract a pack of cigarettes. "My mom happens to think my poetry is beautiful."

"Jotaro, that was your tenth grade English homework, and it's bad." Avdol leans his chin on his folded hands. Polnareff laughs, then tuts. "Dissing a teen's emotional expression. For __shame,__ my beautiful, handsome friend. As a fan of the arts and as a good, honest man, though, I must tell you, it's bad. You're not a linguistic genius."

Jotaro takes a deep drag of his cigarette and waves it around. " _ _Fine__ , never said I was good at that emotional stuff. Stop dragging my soul through the slick, hoser."

"Oh, but __au contraire__ , mon frère." Polnareff folds his arms and sits back, grin firmly in place. "You are plenty good at that emotional stuff. The strings of your guitar express it. It touches my heart, grumpy amigo."

"Bag it, or the next thing touching your heart will be an __attack.__ And __that__ ," Jotaro gets up, unfolding his long legs and pointing the burning end of his cigarette at the people on the couch. "-is bullshit. I am incapable of feelings."

Kakyoin snorts. "You say this, but I saw you smiling at your mom once. Caught in the act."

" _ _Hey,__ that smile got me blueberry waffles. I'll deck any and all of you if you mention any other perceived expression of emotion I might have shown, ever. Also, shut the fuck up. It's practice time." Jotaro grabs Star Platinum from its stand and wildly strums a handful of chords. "Gig this weekend, assholes."

"Actually, I should call my mom to ask about that." Kakyoin grimaces. "Think she'll buy another over-weekend study session?"

"Totally. Or tell her one of us __died__. That'll get you off for a __week__ , at least."

" _ _Jean__ ," Avdol sighs. "You amateur. He tried that last week, and it got him three days."

"We should've said Avdol died. Might've gotten five." Jotaro dumps the butt of his cigarette in the trash bin conveniently stationed next to their table and hands Kakyoin his brick cellphone in the same movement. "Use this. Just press the numbers."

"I'm not going to say any of you died!" Kakyoin has to press in his home phone number several times before realising what button to press to actually make the call connect, and clumsily fumbles with it next to his ear listening to the dial tone. He starts when it connects. "Mother? It's Noriaki. Oh, studying is going well, I feel really confident about it."

Kakyoin watches Jotaro slap at Polnareff's hands when they grab at his jean pockets for his packet of smokes while his mom talks, almost laughing when Avdol grabs Polnareff's leg, he topples over the coffee table and shouts when he bangs something on the edge of it. "Oh! Oh sorry mother, that was… Polnareff. He's helping me study philosophy." Polnareff grins at him, clutching his shin while Jotaro pushes him off the table. "What? Oh, I…" He pinches his eyes shut and sighs. "I'm afraid you can't meet him, mom, he literally just died."

"What? I'm __fine__ — Oh. __Oh.__ Oh no, I'm __so__ dead. Beyond dead. Limbo." Kakyoin flips him off.

"Haha, yeah, a __joke__. __Maybe__ they'll be free next week. __Speaking of__ _—_ " Polnareff gets a smack on the hand for trying to bend his middle finger back into his enclosed fist. " _—_ would it be alright if I spent the next weekend here so I can study maths? There's a big test coming up, wouldn't want to be unprepared."

Avdol throws up a thumbs up.

"I will, mother. She says hi, Polnareff."

"I told you, moms love me."

"He says hi back. Yes, I'll see you tonight. Say hi to dad for me. Bye."

He listens to the click and silence of his mother hanging up the phone and fumbles with the keypad for a couple long seconds before Jotaro grabs it from his hands and pushes the end call button. Kakyoin flops himself back down on the sofa and kicks Jotaro until he sits down on the coffee table, propping his feet up on his thighs. Jotaro bends over and leans his guitar on Kakyoin's ankles, mindlessly strumming a couple of chords before settling on __the Man Who Sold the World,__ humming along to the tune when he doesn't know the words. Polnareff sits on his stool and drums along from the second chorus on, and Kakyoin and Avdol sing the words where Jotaro falters.

They add the song to an empty setlist.

* * *

 _ _January 7th, 1984.__

Kakyoin wakes up somewhere halfway through recess with his skin feeling much too cold and his insides feeling much too warm. He dazedly presses a spot under his eye and wipes some leftover sand away from the corners; scrapes a weary hand down his sweaty face. His palms are clammy and he feels himself only adding to the sweat already on his forehead. He needs a drink.

Jotaro picks tomatoes off his sandwich with a grimace and flicks them at Polnareff, across from them on his side of their rickety cafeteria table. "Polnareff, __dude__ , you are without a doubt __the__ biggest dickhead on this earth."

Polnareff sips at the free coffee he managed to get from the teacher's lounge. Kakyoin unsticks his forehead from where he left it plastered to the table. It leaves a wet spot. "That is __perfect__ ; I'm looking to become state champion."

" _ _Dude__." Jotaro tries to put as much baffled disbelief into the one syllable as his voice will allow. "You are not wearing this shirt to the gig, much less __ever__ again. Where's Avdol? I need him to, like, cut this bunk shit at the root."

"I'm bringing tie-dye back and nobody can stop me, not even my other half. It's __righteous as Hell__. Right, Kak?"

Jotaro twists his chest into the edge of the table and cranes his neck to look past Kakyoin's bang. "Alright, dweeb, I know you love it, but I don't think asking Typhoid Mary for validation holds up in a court of law. Like, testamentary capacity or whatever."

Kakyoin manages lift his hand off the sticky surface of their lunch table to flip him off. "That's for wills, Jotaro."

"You're __practically__ dead."

"I'm __peachy__ ," Kakyoin grits out, pushing his flat palm in Jotaro's face because it's too close to his own. He recoils when Jotaro licks it. " _ _Ew__ , oh my God. I'm fine! I'll hydrate, have a grape, beat this bug—"

"—And you'll be your nice, non-sweaty self again, huh?" Polnareff chucks a green grape at his nose and in his semi-feverish state, he reaches up to grab it only when it's already hit his lap. "Make sure you— Oh! Oh, Avdol! Over here, dude!" He nearly trips over the bench screwed to the floor trying to get up and wave Avdol over to their little corner in the crowded cafeteria.

Avdol slides onto the unoccupied space next to Polnareff with both practised and natural grace, setting a bottle of mineral water next to where Kakyoin's face was getting increasingly closer to the sticky surface of the table. "My lively and dear friends. What's up?"

Jotaro opens Kakyoin's bottle for him when he struggles. "Kakyoin's dead, maybe."

"Hypothesis yet to be proven." Polnareff folds his arms. "Pallor complexion points to corpse status."

"I am __good__ and fine and will soon be fully hydrated, not thanks to you."

Avdol nods. "Did you get the grapes?"

"Sure did." Polnareff slings his arm over Avdol's shoulders and flings another grape at Kakyoin while he's chugging his water. "I'm sharing because I'm so naturally nurturing."

Jotaro plucks the grape off where it bounced into his lap and hands it to Kakyoin. "You're naturally a _ _jerkoff__."

"Ah, but what'd you do without me, dude?" Polnareff shoves his half empty paper cup of coffee at Jotaro's fist. "It's okay, man. I'll provide for you too. Have this caffeine offering."

Jotaro makes a face, curling his lip up and narrowing his eyes. "And get infectious mononucleosis or some shit? No thanks."

"I make out with that cowboy dude from class E __once__ and you just never let it go." Polnareff chugs the remains of his terrible coffee instead, leaning into Avdol's side until he shoves him off. "An impulsive encounter in the second floor bathroom stall and being caught in the act by the man Alessi himself cured me of any possible future homosexual on-school encounters."

Jotaro grimaces and tries to pry a brown spot from the banana that regrettably came with his lunch deal. "I feel responsible for the turn this conversation took and I'd like to apologise."

Kakyoin chokes down his bottle of water and leans back a little, careful not to lean too far and crack his skull on the cafeteria linoleum. "Let's, uh, definitely never revisit this." He plants his sweaty palms back on their table. "Let's think on nicer things, like how Jotaro's uncle is decidedly __not__ a forty year old man with great hair—"

"You—" Jotaro struggles and gapes for several seconds, Polnareff ducking his hand when it flails for his head.

"—but is in fact a leather-jacket wearing teen who likes smooth jazz and buys Polnareff's gel brand. And great hair."

"You're never getting near any more of my family. It's ruining my rep." He gives up on his banana and starts prying the lid off his pudding cup. "You'll meet him soon enough, probably. It's his boyfriend's big gay poetry recital."

"Man, none of you ever came to __my__ big gay poetry recitals." Polnareff tugs at Avdol's wide sleeve until he groans and hands him his cup of applesauce.

"Because your big gay poetry is exclusively written in __French__ , you dick. Man, I was looking __forward__ to that."

"Aw, dude, I saved my custard for you. Have no fear—it's the kind with the sauce." Polnareff shoves it at him with the same hand he's using to balance the applesauce, denting the plastic in both. "You know, we should play some, uh. What's that band Jotaro likes?"

Jotaro eats his pudding more aggressively than Kakyoin's ever watched a man consume dessert. "You know that tells me absolutely nothing, right?"

"Echo and the Bunnymen! You know, the dark brooding type. __Crocodiles__ album, though, not _ _Porcupine__. Or Joy Division? I could rock __Disorder__."

" _ _She's Lost Control__ seems like a solid enough choice for an artsy evening." Kakyoin shoves his food around a little, but doesn't eat more than his potatoes. "Would fit Jotaro's voice range too, I think."

"And so we've come full circle." Jotaro finishes his lunch and lights a cigarette regardless of the firm no smoking policy the school tries to enforce. "I never thought I'd say this, but I think we need to sort through Polnareff's weird dark original songs. This is the art crowd, yeah? They love original content about murder and shit. If we toss in a couple they'd probably love us."

Polnareff presses the hand he's using to spoon applesauce into his open mouth to his chest theatrically. "And here I thought you didn't appreciate my talent."

"I don't." Jotaro shoves his fruit smoothie at Kakyoin. Kakyoin takes it wordlessly, uncaps it and downs the couple gulps of it in the next few seconds. His stomach feels like it turns inside-out for a few seconds, churning and bubbling up his throat.

"So," he breathes out, interrupting Polnareff's affronted gasp. "There's three songs on our set list? Excluding Polnareff's poetic lament."

Avdol upends his tiny custard pudding on his paper plate. "It's only the start of the week. Anything can happen."

* * *

Polnareff elbows Jotaro in the ribs while the consequence of getting punched for it is off the table. "Maybe you just gotta give him a kiss, sleeping beauty style."

"If there weren't a corpse dangling from my arms, your ass would be wherever Jupiter is." Jotaro adjusts Kakyoin's weight and half drops him on the couch before nearly plopping down on his legs at the foot of it. "And you would be dead. Thought I'd spell it out for you."

"Harsh, man! Then who'd hotbox your garage?"

Jotaro finally punches him in the chest and Kakyoin's eyes open, the world spinning into view of Polnareff holding his nipple. "Wha—"

"Kakyoin, dude!" Polnareff stops rubbing his nipple only for the short second it takes him to notice Kakyoin struggling up. "You, like, half passed out like a beautiful, muscular damsel. Jotaro stood there silently panicking for ages, man. I think he got half of a confused boner, maybe. Wasn't looking particularly closely at his crotch area, and— __and__ you're not listening."

"Yeah, no, I __was__ , it was just, __uh__ , total bunk?" His arms feel beyond heavy when he uses them to push himself upright and into the ragged arm of the sofa.

"Like I'd lie about my friends' boners; __please__ , I could have taken __shelter__ —"

Kakyoin promptly folds himself over the edge of his seat and retches.

"—and could have __easily__ \- Oh! Oh, __fuck__ , dude."

Jotaro sits next to Kakyoin with his feet propped up somewhat clumsily to shove his hand in between his shoulder blades and rub. "Look what you did, man. You're making me touch someone."

Polnareff steps back to avoid the possible splatter zone of Kakyoin's heaving and throws up his hands. "You __like__ touching him, dude. You are __so__ sprung—"

Jotaro's entire face goes a light pink and he pats Kakyoin's back a little more aggressively than he intended, grasping the bang hanging in front of his face and tucking it behind his ear. "Shut the __hell__ up, wazzik. I don't __touch__ people, what the fuck. He is alive and has __ears__ and is vomiting on my garage floor. God, __jerk__ off. Go get some water, stop joking around."

Polnareff cackles and leaves for the kitchen, where Avdol is describing Kakyoin's symptoms to Holly hovering near the medicine cabinet. "I've never made a joke in my life, butthorn."

Kakyoin sits back, nearly headbutting Jotaro who promptly lets go of his hair, and stares at him with glassy, unfocused eyes. Jotaro's hands hover around his back before settling back on the pillows of the couch. "Dude, you should take it easy. Mom says you probably caught a bug."

Kakyoin sighs and closes his eyes. "Yeah, probably."

Jotaro gets up and grabs two fistfulls of paper towels from the corner table, dumping them on the small puddle of vomit near Kakyoin's legs without unfolding them. Kakyoin blinks at him through his barely opened eyelids and groans. "God, I'm sorry, I— I can't believe I spat up on your floor, I—"

"Dude, whatever, Polnareff does that like, every week." Jotaro sits back down, evading the small pile of tissues, sitting turned away from Kakyoin so his feet can touch clean floor. "It's fine."

In the next silent few seconds between them they hear Polnareff's boisterous laughter from the kitchen, overpowering Avdol's deep chuckle and Holly's soft babbling.

"We should get you to the living room. Mom'll want to give you a million different flu remedies and test alternative medicine shit or whatever." Jotaro jostles Kakyoin a little where he's shivering and pale in the corner of their seat. "Better just let her do it."

Kakyoin nods jerkily, his jaws stiffly shut together, moving to get up. He tries two times, weakly falling back into the cushions before Jotaro hooks an arm under his and hooks it around his back, helping him up. Holly swarms them as soon as they make it to the open kitchen door, feeling Kakyoin's forehead and exclaiming in concern. She moves back to let them move to the living room, following them with a wet cloth and a glass of water. Kakyoin downs it faster than he probably should, judging by the immediate reeling of his stomach. He lets Holly push him back down and pile him under a mound of blankets, wondering faintly if his arms would be able to push the stack of them off if he wanted to, and feels her press two pills into his palms.

"For the fever, dear," she urges, squeezing out her wet dishcloth and wiping his forehead with it. "I'd better let your parents know you're staying with us for now too; couldn't let you go out the door in good conscience."

Kakyoin thinks to protest, he'll be fine, he'll call, he's bothered them enough, but he's warm and weighed down and fuzzy and thinks maybe it'd be okay if he stayed here a little longer. Jotaro squats next to him, squinting. "It'll be fine, dude. Mom's good with parents. Must be an old people thing." He picks up Kakyoin's empty glass. "I'll get Polnareff the fuck out of here."

Kakyoin listens to him walk off with his eyes closed, the cloth resting on his forehead, cool for as long as the temperature of his skin will allow it. He listens to Holly softly speaking into the transmitter of her rotary phone and to Polnareff loudly complaining he hadn't even had a beer yet; listens to Jotaro come back and set a glass on the floor next to him. He thinks he's left and gone back to the kitchen, the garage, his room, until he hears the soft scuff of his heels on the carpet. He's too tired to startle when Jotaro suddenly speaks in the silence of the room.

"Mom says you can chill here until you're better. It'll be okay, man. Just be, like, not gross and sweaty by Saturday. We kinda need you, or whatever."

He walks off before Kakyoin has the chance to open his eyes to slits and rasp out a reply.

Kakyoin easily attributes the burst of warmth in his gut to his fever, and falls asleep in the short space of time in between Holly asking Jotaro what he'd like for dinner, and his answer.


	8. Spirits in the material world

_January 12th, 1984._

Jotaro watches his reflection press a fingertip down on his scowl, trying to smooth out the wrinkles already forming around his eye sockets. It only makes him scowl more. Kakyoin wears his emotions on his sleeve, he thinks. When _he's_ mad, people know. And when he's happy his entire face moves with it. When he's upset, you can tell by the draw of his eyebrows and the set of his jaw; he never pretends to be too cool to be bummed out. It's a perfectly clear, freshly cleaned window to his emotions.

Jotaro himself is kind of… constant to a fault, if anything. Relaxing all the muscles in his face results in a scowl, every other expression in his repertoire a subtle variation. When he's mad, his eyebrows draw down and when he's happy, they draw up. Simple. Easy. People ask him what he's feeling in pictures and though he remembers and knows perfectly how to read his own face, no one else seems to be able. He straightens his back and pulls at the bottom of his shirt after trying to make his face perform what he thinks is a perfectly charming smile, stretching the star print over his abs. "Fuck." Then, more emphatically— " _Fuck._ "

He turns away from his mirror after nearly stabbing his iris with his eyeliner pen and grabs the bottle of water he's balanced somewhere on the mess on his nightstand. He shoves it in his backpack and grabs his jacket off the hanger by his door in the same movement.

"Fuck this shit." Jotaro's phone's been steadily ringing for as long as he's been ignoring it, the insistent buzzing in his bag almost as tangible as the pounding of the headache inside his skull. He yanks it out from in between his books and pushes the tiny accept call button. "Jesus, _what_?"

"Jotaro, my man, what the _fuck_ is _up_!" Polnareff's voice early in the morning does the same thing it always does to Jotaro regardless of hour: make him homicidal. "Shut the fuck up, dickhead, it's _nine_ in the AM."

"Dude, you know how I feel about early hours. Would I call you if it were not an absolute emergency?"

Jotaro paused. "Yes. Yes you absolutely would, you _fuck_ head. I'm hanging u—"

"No! Man, think of the band dynamics. We have to _love_ and _cherish_ each other—"

"I will say up to three kind words at your funeral." Jotaro sits back down on his rumpled sheets. "To what do I owe the pleasure? Where's Avdol to tell you to never call me ever?"

Polnareff laughs and Jotaro sits back with his phone pressed carelessly in between his shoulder and his ear until he's done. There's a long sigh on the other end of the line. "He's at work till five. I'm bored, dude. At least you'll get to see your red hot flame in like, what? An hour?"

"Half." Jotaro's phone switches shoulders when it feels like his cheek overheats. Interesting stains on his ceiling, too. Leakage, probably. Should tell his mom about that. "He's not my _flame_ or whatever, burn-out. Cut that shit."

"Whatev', don't have a cow. _But_ you're totally wild for him. Righteously so, too, like. Kak is, like, _bodacious_. Choice package if I ever saw one. And his hair is obnoxiously silky."

Jotaro leans his forehead into his left palm. "Dude, don't touch his hair."

Polnareff scoffs. "What, man! It was only the noodle. And it was silky smooth, what can I say. Got a little stroking action in before it got weird."

"It's weird. It was weird from the start, you oblivious fucker." He hears the unmistakable creak of Polnareff getting comfortable in Avdol's armchair and mumbling along to reruns of Saturday Night Live through the line. "You and Avdol coming to the club together tonight for rehearsal?"  
Polnareff finishes his impersonation of the Night Live crew doing the Solomon's Nephew sketch before he answers. "Uh, yeah, I think we will. Oh! Dude. _Dude_. Did I mention we got the van back yesterday?"

Jotaro groans. "Jesus. Okay, what'd Johnny do?"

"Mon _Dieu_ , What _didn't_ he do?" Polnareff switches channels to something Jotaro can't entirely discern, he thinks it's the Mars Milky Way advert. "In, like, a good way, _duh_. Runs _super_ smooth. Like a baby's butt. Is that how they say it? Makes _zero_ sound. And it's _blue_ now. Real slick. Avdol thinks Gyro changed the, uh... What's it called? Le, _uh_ , claxon. The horn? Whatever it is, it plays the synth intro— _dude_ , synthro— it's the _synthro_ of _Tainted Love._ "

Jotaro begrudgingly accepts that's wicked as Hell. "And you're just letting me _cycle downtown_ like some kind of caveman when you own _this_ sweet ride."

Polnareff laughs so hard Jotaro hears him drop something. "Oh my God, Kakyoin said almost the same thing. You kids are _priceless_. Cycling is good for you! Makes you work those calf muscles. Back in my day, _everyone_ cycled."

"You're so full of shit, dude. ' _Back in my day_ '— you shithead, you don't even have a year on me." He looks up when his door is nudged open, about to tell his mom off for forgetting to knock, when he hears the soft purring before the small pink nose and whiskers announce the arrival of one of his strays, a blue-eyed and completely white little thing he found when he was younger and in his excitement to own a cat, named _Tiger_. The old cat enters the room gracefully despite its three legs and stubby tail, stretching, meowing and hopping up on his lap when he lifts his elbows to make room for her. She nudges at and headbutts his phone, trying to get him to pet her with both hands.

"You _know_ a couple months is _everything_ in a post-crisis economy recovering as quickly as ours and— wait, dude, is that your cat? I _love_ cats. Is it the white one? She is _so_ cool. Wish _I_ was a cat. They're, like, wicked flexible and can lick their own genitals and such. Killer stuff! Can _you_ lick your own genitals? _Didn't_ think so."

"Don't want to, man." His cat licks the receiver and her tail starts swooping left to right, annoyed at how little attention she's getting. Polnareff lets out a loud disbelieving snort and she stops licking the receiver only long enough to glare at it.

" _You,_ my friend, are fibbing, and I won't have it."

"I'm hanging up now."

"Haha, _okay_ , okay. Chill pills go on sale next week, I'll get you some." The armchair creaks and Polnareff groans a little. Stretching, probably. Lazy bastard. "You're bringing your guitar, yes?"

He moves to lie down flat on his sheets, his neck at an awkward crick where his upper body is too tall and his shoulders meet the wall and his legs dangling over the edge. Tiger takes the opportunity to climb up and start kneading at his chest, licking his shirt and happily sharpening her claws on his nipples. "Not sure yet. Would be nice. Avdol's bringing his, yeah?"

" _Ab_ solutely. Oh! Hang on, dude." He sings along to the Toys R Us 'I Don't Wanna Grow Up' jingle playing in between scenes and Jotaro exhibits an inhuman amount of patience. "Man, if you leave your guitar with Holly-mom we could pick it up on our way? It's not that much of a detour."

"You're _never_ allowed to touch my guitar. _Ever_. Nobody, actually… nobody touches that thing." He tries to grab his pack of cigarettes without moving his chest and jostling his cat. "Don't touch my shit. Wear gloves."

"Will do, Jojo-boy! Consider it done. I'll have Avdol get some of those pink latex gloves on the way, fret not, amigo."

Jotaro wriggled the carton and his lighter from his pants pocket with only minor movement. "You'd better."

"You're _welcome_." Polnareff laughs again, a little more subdued than usual, and Jotaro is reminded of the fact Polnareff really doesn't do well on his own. He moves Tiger off his chest and gracelessly moves off the bed, phone pressing an indent into his cheek, to shoo her out of his room so he can smoke without worrying about adenocarcinoma or any other lethal cat shit. "Thanks. Tell Avdol too."

"Pff, tell him yourself."

"I've hit my gratitude quota for the decade, so, like, remember this call well." He sucks on his cigarette for ten full seconds before realising he hasn't lit it. He doesn't know if he has the time to finish it before Kakyoin arrives and is forced to sit in the stink of his smoke, which he's told is quite repugnant—

He moves to open the window at the foot end of his bed and sits down with his face facing the incoming stream of cold air before lighting his Marlboro. "I'm sure Kakyoin would _love_ it if you came by too. He likes you for whatever reason. The kindness of his heart or whatever gay shit, probably."

He hears Polnareff get up from his undoubtedly impossibly contorted position in his chair to switch to the couch, tripping on the loose laminate in between the seats and making the landline clatter to the floor. He swears loudly before he moves his mouth back to the horn. "Nah, dude. I'm absolutely _sure_ you two lovebirds would give me a _stellar_ time in gay bunkville—"

"You'd be _mayor_ of gay bunkville, you f—"

"—buuuuuuut I have eyeliner to apply and a jar of hair gel to finish. _Do_ tell Kak I said hi, though. European style, you know?"

Jotaro huffs out his deep lungful of unfiltered smoke, watching the little cloud disperse just outside his window. "Fuck you, and I am absolutely hanging up."

"Okay, bye man, see you tonight, don't do anything I wouldn—" Jotaro spares himself the rest of the sentence, mashing the red button on his phone. He shoves it back in his bag and hopes the thick fabric might muffle any and all noises from it. He's halfway through a six-second drag when he remembers why he opened the window and moves his head to the opening so fast he worries about whiplash. Coughing, he straightens back up and taps his cigarette to rid the end of ashes.

Jotaro carefully thinks about nothing but his guitar - the price of new strings and how long his pick would last him, already worn down as it is - when he catches movement outside. A quick flash of it. His window is a little too far back to see the entire front lawn, but he sees enough to make him to shove his cigarette back in his mouth. He inhales urgently, watching red hair and a green uniform neatly walk up the gravel path his mom is so proud of, trying to finish his cigarette before the doorbell rings.

He fucks up _right_ when he hears the ridiculous 'Joy to the World' chime. He feels his entire chest burn and his lungs contract, tears springing to his eyes before he exhales half a lungful of smoke in a forceful cough. It's his mom's voice at the door that makes him hold in his breath desperately, willing himself to stop choking like some kind of toothless _baby_. It doesn't work and he chokes out another cough, spraying a significant amount of saliva into his room, like he's a sprinkler and his carpet desperately needs a watering. He's chugging half his bottle of water by the time there's steps on the stairs and wiping his eyes with his sleeves and plonking himself down on his bed by the time the knock on the door comes.

"Jotaro? Holly said to just go up and knock. Can I come in?"

He starts saying yes, but a lingering hack crawling up his throat makes it come out like a grunt.

The horrifying realisation he's just _sitting_ on his _bed_ comes as soon as his doorknob twists. He's sitting on his bed and his hands are folded in his lap and he's not doing anything except for _sit on his bed_ like a sadsack, which is probably weird. He debates internally the benefits of lunging for his bag to have something to occupy his hands with versus _sitting_ when Kakyoin takes his first step into his room and he's been spotted. "Good morning!"

Kakyoin's smile is cheerful and clear and the metal in his mouth glints a little even though Jotaro's room is dim. Bonus is he doesn't seem weirded out by how it looks like Jotaro's been waiting for him like Ernst Stavro Blofeld. Kakyoin leaves his door open for an amount of seconds Jotaro could feasibly count on his hands, but Tiger enters before he can close it anyway, quickly reclaiming her seat on his lap and stretching languidly. He thinks his face betrays an acceptable amount of embarrassment, but Kakyoin just laughs, a chuckle an octave higher than his speaking voice, and sits down next to him. "I didn't know you had a cat! What's her name?"

Jotaro looks down at her. She sniffs his hand and continues kneading at his thigh. "There's… a couple. They're downstairs. This is Tiger, and she's not allowed in my room."

"I can see that." Kakyoin reaches out to brush his fingers over her fur and scratch her behind the ears. "I bet you buy their treats yourself and everything."

"There's nothing wrong with that."

"There most certainly isn't. It's sweet." Kakyoin leans back on his hands and objections of him not being _sweet_ die at the back of his tongue. "Oh! Hey, Polnareff said you like ocean stuff, so, uh, _hey,_ did you know that if crabs lose limbs during fights they'll grow back?"

Crab facts. Jotaro didn't think a dude could get any cooler. Kakyoin twirls his hair, and Jotaro might want to see what Polnareff's fuss about the silkiness of it is about. Kakyoin chuckles. "I know shit about crabs, actually. Dolphins, though! I know… _most_ things a middle schooler writing a report would have to know about dolphins. _Coincidentally_."

Jotaro hacks. It's a laugh, maybe, if he's very liberal with himself. "Did _you_ know crabs don't have teeth in their mouths, but some of them have teeth in their stomachs. They grind together to mash up food." Jotaro leans back too, moving to sit back against the wall. Kakyoin joins him, scooting his butt back and using his ankles to push off the edge of the bed.

"That is…" Kakyoin flounders for the word. "That's… _serial._ The wonders of the ocean, huh?"

"Yeah." He pushes Tiger off to get up and close the forgotten open window, quickly sweeping the ashes off the windowsill and into the backyard. She decides Kakyoin's lap is an acceptable substitute. He pets her and looks at him thoughtfully.

"So you don't wear your hat when you're on your own, huh?" Kakyoin looks briefly horrified he asked. "I mean, of course you wouldn't, but you, uh… I'd never thought about it."

"I usually do wear it," Jotaro supplies, sitting back down. "Like, all the time."  
"Can't let people know you have stick-up baby hairs?" Kakyoin laughs, and it'd be positively charming if Jotaro were inclined to think those sorts of things. He reaches up to smooth them down but stops when his fingertips are close enough to Jotaro's scalp they're almost burning him. Jotaro feels a little like Tiger. Kakyoin stares at his own hand, slightly mortified, slightly embarrassed.

Jotaro wants to break the silence but his voice cracks and he clears his throat. "You feeling all better?"

"Huh?" Kakyoin withdraws his arm and starts using it to pet the cat rolling around on his lap with a _lot_ of enthusiasm.

"Are you all better? The, uh," Jotaro gestures at him. "The, uh, puking and shit."

"Oh!" Kakyoin hooks his longer lock of bright red hair behind his ear. "Yeah, much. Thank you and Holly so much for letting me stay the night. It's all gone now."

"Please, you were so disgustingly polite, she wants you to stay over _every_ night." He pitches his voice and crosses his legs. "Ah, thank you, Holly-san. Your cooking is delightful. Oh, no, no, let _me_ take that—"

Kakyoin punches him in the arm, cackling. Tiger leaves, disgruntled at how much her pillow moves and Kakyoin deepens his voice, squaring his jaw and frowning. "I'm Jotaro Kujo and I'm too cool to be polite. I pretend to hate my mom's cooking but I secretly long for her pancakes every minute of every _day_ —" A pillow hits him in the face and a couple locks of his hair sit wildly on his head. His voice is almost entirely breathless with laughter. "If you kill me, they'll know! Your mom let me in!"

"She'll lie for me in court, dude. I'm her _baby_ boy." He connects his pillow with Kakyoin's scrunched up face again. "Ah, what a shame, who will be our magic piano man? Who will play all my games and annihilate my pathetic Super Cobra high score—"

" _Mercy_! Mercy and foul play! You never said you had Super Cobra!" Kakyoin flails his arm from around the pillow and his flat palm lands smack in the middle of Jotaro's face. Jotaro blinks, his eyelashes touching Kakyoin's fingers and in the silence, Kakyoin moves to free his head. "Oh—" He chokes. "Oh my god, _moded_."

Kakyoin's palm is still touching Jotaro's face, so he does what any mature man would do and licks it.

Kakyoin pulls a face and wipes his hand on his uniform pants. "I can't believe I never expect you to—" He shakes his head and sits up fully, his lips still twitching upwards and eyes still crinkling in the corners. "What was that about Super Cobra?"

* * *

"Could you go faster? My butt has pins and needles."

Jotaro wheezes and tries to pedal faster. " _You_ go if you think you can do a better job."

"Don't feel like it." Kakyoin's hands around his waist twist into his shirt when the wheel of their bike bounces off a raised street brick. "Besides, _you_ have the strong legs. I have the upper body strength."

"Alright, skiver geek. Hold tight." He moves his legs rapidly but their speed increase is very little and anti-climatic. He soon returns to the slow kicking rhythm he started with.

Kakyoin's tall legs are folded so the bottom of his shoes clings to the axle bolts of the rear wheel, his knees sticking out to the sides. "Wow, I _almost_ felt a breeze there."

"If you think for _one_ second I'm too winded to get off this bike and kick your ass..." Kakyoin just laughs a little and kicks him in the calf as best as he can without jostling them too much. He feels sweat gather underneath his hat and in his hairline despite the temperature, but he'll die before he admits his steady supply of energy is slowly winding down with every turn of the pedals.

It's cold, more so than usual for what he supposes is about mid-January, but his mom wrapped his neck in a scarf before he left his guitar with her, and he's silently grateful when he hides the bottom half of his face in it and breathes warm air.

Kakyoin's freezing hands bury themselves in his coat pockets, amongst the packets of gum and loose change. "Not to be that person, but are we nearly there? Your shoulders aren't sheltering me from the wind as well as I thought they would."

"It's at the end of this road and to the right." Jotaro inhales a lungful of dry air. "You're not even _doing_ anything."

"I'm being your live entertainment, and I'm cold. Chop chop, squire."

"We need to cut off the amount of words Polnareff says to you, drastically. There can't be two of you." He stops pedalling when the road starts sloping down to a small square.

Kakyoin's fingers curl in his pockets when he snickers, digging into his sides a little. He feels it's about twenty years too early to let Kakyoin know he's ticklish, so he leans forward onto his steering wheel, propelling them forward faster before turning right.

They hear Polnareff's uproarious laughter far before they're close enough to make out his face, sitting sideways on the backseat of the van - his legs dangling out the open door and swinging in front of him, back, left and right in a steady pattern. He's wearing rubber gloves past his elbows and nearly inhales them covering his mouth and laughing when Jotaro cycles up to the van, using the heels of his expensive shoes to brake. Kakyoin hops off while it's still slowing down, nearly losing his balance and having to jog a little to right himself. He gives a low whistle seeing the van and Polnareff hops out excitedly while Jotaro walks off to get their bike locked up.

"What do you think, friends? Isn't it a beaut?" He gestures excitedly to the new wheel caps. "Look! Not rusty at all! It's so wild."

Avdol walks around the hood and moves past Polnareff to unlock the back doors. "It's so quiet too. Much easier to focus. And," he gestures to the inside of the van and Kakyoin bends around to look inside. "They did a lot with the back. Not sure we even got the full gist of it yet, but I'm pretty sure there's more _space_ in here."

"They didn't have to get rid of the disco ball though, that thing was _killer_."

Avdol sighs like he's had this argument a _lot_ the past couple days. "Jean, they absolutely _did_ have to get rid of the disco ball. They did _not_ have to paint over the flame decal."

Jotaro gives up on the bicycle stand and leans their bike against the wall of the club instead, walking over to join them. "You know Johnny always gets stars all over everything. Of course he's going to spray paint right over the flames."

Polnareff hums. "Ah, but I guess a righteous as Hell rooftop discoball is a small price to pay for a van that, like, _drives_."

"I like it." Kakyoin strokes the white and yellow stars painted all over the back doors. "Midnight blue and a small solar system in the back. Johnny's a real artist."

"Don't let him hear that, his head won't fit through the door. _Dude_ , where's my guitar? I know you have it." Jotaro pointedly looks at Polnareff's gloves. "Hand it over, slick."

"Oui! Avdol can testify it was totally safe in the backseat with me and that _no_ weird shit whatsoever happened. At _all._ " He pulls it out of the backseat, the barely any sun there is reflecting off its solid body. Jotaro takes it from him by the neck.

"Why, uh…" Kakyoin frowns. "I'm no guitarist, but, uh, isn't there supposed to be a case for that?"

Jotaro scoffs and straps his guitar safely around his body. "Cats sleep in it, duh."

"Ah, yeah, of course."

Jotaro detects what he feels might be sarcasm, but chooses to ignore it. "Apparently the backline of this place is mostly complete. Has everything we'd need, anyways, and their synth—"

"Nephew!"

Polnareff's eyes go comically wide and the corners of his mouth curl upwards so far Jotaro thinks they might level with his nostrils. " _Josuke!_ Dude!"

"Kids!" Josuke bounds over from the door, and Jotaro has the distinct feeling he's about to be embarrassed in front of a new friend he feels he doesn't want to be embarrassed in front of. " _Oh_ , who's this?"

Jotaro feels his soul leave his body and float out into the winter air. To Hell, probably. "Kakyoin, this is my… uncle. My uncle Josuke. Who is _sixteen_ years old." He gives Josuke a look he's sure says _shut up_ as best as he's able. "Josuke, this is Kakyoin, our synth player."

"Oh!" Kakyoin smiles, polite like he came out of the womb with his arm out just to bow and greet people. "It's very nice to meet you, Josuke. I've heard so much about you."

Josuke snorts. "That's very kind of you but Jotaro never talks about any of us, like, ever. He loves me, though. You can tell by how much he looks like he wants to punch you, right Pol?" Polnareff nods seriously, eyes closed. "So you're the new addition to the band! Dude, uh, Jotaro, he's like, way polite and proper and shit. You sure he's friends with you?"

Jotaro thinks for a bit that he's not sure what they are, and friends _would_ loosely define it, but not properly. Like how wanting to punch Polnareff in the face but also being willing to catch bullets for him isn't properly encapsulated in what friendship means for most people, but it has to do. He settles on "yeah," and leaves it at that.

"Dude," Polnareff slings his arm around Josuke's shoulders and hangs off him. " _Dude_. Jotaro goes all _goo-goo_ star-eyes and talks about adopting like, forty cats with him? Bunch of cats and like, a million fish."

"I don't remember saying any shit like that." Jotaro pulls the neck of his guitar in close to himself and moves to go inside and does _not_ look at Kakyoin's face or thinks about the practicalities of owning forty cats. He's _almost_ sure that wouldn't work very well. Ridiculous. "Let's go. It's cold as _fuck_."

Kakyoin makes a bowl of his hands and blows into it, his breath whistling out of him softly. "So you, like, _don't_ want to adopt forty cats with me?"

"I feel like this is a trap so I'm letting this conversation die its natural death." Jotaro lifts his legs so he doesn't trip over the high entrance and simultaneously ducks his head a little so he doesn't crash into the low lintel. He hears Polnareff slam his forehead into the frame and the deep laughter of Avdol mingling with Josuke's chuckles.

There's soft music playing from small speakers attached to the wall by the bar, the sound filling the small space. He thinks the music is supposed to be soothing or whatever, but it makes his skin crawl a little. Too new age. The dark wood paneling looks the same as the laminate flooring and the staff's lit candles on the small tables littering the place, but he still feels like there's something stopping the atmosphere from feeling _too_ comfortable. Like he's listening to a very nice song but once in awhile some dickhead blasts an airhorn. Maybe something more subtle than that, like a triangle instrument.

Josuke moves past him and motions them to the bar, sitting next to an occupied stool. The bartender steadily ignores them in favour of very intently polishing glasses. "Dude, Oku. Jotaro and the gang's here!"

The boy next to him looks up from the scrawls on the piece of paper clutched in his sweaty palms. He has his jacket sleeves rolled up to the elbows and his dress shoes curled around the legs of his stool. "Jotaro, man, hey!"

Polnareff plops down in the barstool to the right of him. "Okuyasu, my guy, the legend, how is it?"

" _Ahh_ , you know." He sighs and rubs his forehead a little. "This recital, dude."

"Oku's performing tonight, you know!" Josuke butts in from next to him, a proud glow on his cheeks. "His poem is _wicked_. I got shivers like, _everywhere_ and I think I cried a little. You're so good, dude. You're gonna do great and I love you."

Josuke smooches Okuyasu on the cheek before he can get his mouth to the straw of his drink. "Thank you, bro, love you too." He sucks at his straw noisily, inhaling what looks like orange soda. "Uh, Mikitaka was here like, a second ago and Koichi and Yukako are in the corner booth, bein' all gross and in love and stuff. Not sure where Reimi is, actually."

Avdol chuckles from his stool next to Polnareff. " _You're_ all gross and in love and stuff, my man."

"Haha, _yeah_ ," Josuke leans his elbows on the bar and raises his voice. "Yo, _Rohan_ , dude! Can I get a drink too?"

Their bartender takes his time setting the glasses he was drying down with the others and approaches them. "If you take off your coats first. It's bad enough Okuyasu wears sunglasses indoors."

Okuyasu adjusts his circular frames. "It's _cool_."

"I think so too. They look good," Kakyoin chimes in from Jotaro's elbow where he's sitting on the corner stool next a small half-wall separation in between the bar and the performance area.

Okuyasu glows with his smile. "Yo, thank you, random stranger!"

"Oh! Dude." Josuke elbows him. "Dude, this is their new band member. The synth player."

Okuyasu's eyes go wide. " _Oh_ , bro, dude, uh, it's nice to meet you! I'm Okuyasu. I'm Josuke's boyfriend!"

His smile is proud and wide and infectious and rivalled only by Josuke's matching one. Jotaro half listens to Kakyoin's response while he shrugs out of his coat and scarf, taking Kakyoin's with him when he goes to hang it up. He gets back just when Rohan is busy craftily pouring them all drinks.

Polnareff leans his chin on his face and watches him pour coke on some chunks of ice with much more flourish than necessary. "So Rohan, dude, how's the comic coming along?"

Josuke immediately sits up straighter and his grin threatens to split his face. Rohan scoffs without looking up. "It's not a comic, Polnareff. It's art. And it's coming along _shit_."

"Sucks, dude." Polnareff makes grabby hands for his drink and happily takes a couple straws from the cup. "You seen Reimi?"

He slides Josuke and Jotaro their drinks and hums. "She was at the stage with Mikitaka a while ago, fixing your backline. There were some issues with the bass amp. They'll have it fixed in no time."

Josuke ogles his drink. "Dude, did you just slip me milk again?"

"Children shouldn't have fizzy drinks. Makes them excitable." Rohan slides Kakyoin's drink over the bar top like he's in a Western. " _Coats_. Off."

"You think she's still mad at me? Reimi?" Josuke swirls his straw through his milk, resigned, and sighs.

Okuyasu stops softly muttering his lines and looks up from his poem. "Bro, she wasn't _really_ mad. She knows you're just worried."

"Ah, well…" He rubs the back of his head. " _Okay_ , dudes. Last week, right? This girl just _disappears_ , without a trace. She used to perform here. Haven't seen her since. Not the first time this happens too, and police comes in and everything! The owner wouldn't tell them anything, though. Said he hadn't seen her, but, like, we _totally_ know he did. Wasn't that wack Oku?"

" _Yeah_ , wack as Hell."

"Right! So we're like, okay, we'll tell them all we know instead 'cause we're losing our shit. We keep telling Reimi to be careful too, but she won't hear a word."

Kakyoin frowns. "That does sound scary, but I'm sure she'll be fine. She has all of you watching her back, right?" Polnareff takes off his coat after another pointed look from Rohan and a promise to make him pay for drinks, revealing an artistically tie-dyed tank top. Kakyoin promptly leans his forehead in his palms. " _Aaaaaand_ you're not wearing that shirt. Avdol, slip him one of your robes, I can't look at this."

"Was already on it, man." Avdol slides his orange robe around Polnareff's shoulders, who works his arms through the sleeves with a grin.

"Jokes on you, dude. I look great in Avdol's clothes and they smell nice. Like firewood and forest."

"You say you look good every time but you look like a weird European muppet, hoser." Jotaro downs the last of his coke and chews on his ice cubes. "My mom taught me not to lie."

Polnareff touches his chest, huffing. "You are lying to _yourself_ , my Japanese-American friend, and if your darling uncle wasn't right here I'd deck you, man."

"Don't mind me, dude. Go for it."

Jotaro snorts. "Yeah, _dude_. Go for it. I'd love to watch you try."

"Stipulation!" Polnareff grabs a pen from Avdol's robe pocket and starts carving on his coaster, drowning out Rohan's 'we don't have an unlimited supply, dickhead'. " _Stipulation_. We have to both be nude and covered in oil. Like _such_." He shows them a small doodle of a very muscular, very naked Polnareff wrestling a very muscular Jotaro to the ground.

Jotaro doesn't think Kakyoin is trying very well to suppress his laughter. "Uncanny! Is that true to life?"

"Okay, well," Jotaro debates the pros and cons of a friendship with Polnareff. " _I'll_ be right there, playing some music. Polnareff, stay here for, like, _ever_."

Reimi is still bent over next to someone elbows deep in the inner workings of an amplifier. Their silver hair covers their face and part of the apparatus. She mutters something that makes them look up and smile, and when Jotaro saunters over, they're deeply engrossed in a conversation about switchers and fuseholders. The technician slowly gets up, stretching their legs and wincing a little after having been crouched for what was probably a long time. "Okay, well, we got it on without it exploding. So that's… that gives me hope."

Avdol walks over and takes his bass from its case. "That's a bass amp, right? Would it help if I tested it?"

"Oh!" Reimi startles and drops a screwdriver. It rolls off and behind the stage, but nobody makes a move to recollect it. "Guys! Hi! Thank you so much for wanting to play for us tonight. It's looking to be _packed_. Some of the equipment had trouble, but Mikitaka is managin' all of it, so don't you worry."

Mikitaka makes a high, pleased noise when Avdol plays a couple notes without blowing up the amplifier. "That's that! Done!" They shut it back off, not willing to take any risks, and faces them. "It could still very much blow up while you're playing, but let's look at it from the bright side. At least, uh… well, we've still got our _health_."

"We _sure_ do." Polnareff inspects the drum set with a low whistle. "This thing looks good for such a tiny little thing!"

"I'm sure it'll do everything you need it to do." Mikitaka grins. "I built the synth myself! Should work like a charm."

Kakyoin sits himself down on the little bench and inspects the synthesizer, reverently touching the keys. "I've never played a double synth before, but I'm sure I could manage."

"Well, just get to know your instruments, I guess!" Reimi claps her hands, bouncing at the spot. "I'll be announcing you guys tonight, so let me know if you want me to say anything in particular. Everything else is pretty standard. You'll start off, play a song, we have a bunch of poetry readings, an intermission where you play some songs, some more readings, songs, yadda, yadda, until the night is over and we have to send everyone home. Oh! _Dude_ , that guitar _rips!_ " She points excitedly at Jotaro's guitar and he has to hold it out of reach so her fingers don't touch.

"Uh, _thanks_?"

"Got it, _mizzzzz_ Sugimoto!" Polnareff bashes at the cymbals. "We'll make it mint, we'll let it rip, and they'll beg us for more!"

She laughs, climbing offstage. Mikitaka helps her down where the step is too high up for her shoe to touch the ground properly, holding her elbow. "You'd better!"

"Ah, fffffff- _Hell_ , what was our setlist?" Polnareff scratches the back of his head with one of his drumsticks. "I know we had some, uh... well. I know we did that Bowie song."

Kakyoin fiddles with the millions of buttons on his temporary synth. "Let's just… go over the thing. We have an hour, right? So, like, that would be good. I know I said I could manage, but I'll need some time to figure out the keys on this."

Avdol strums his bass a couple times, tuning it to C major. He changes the volume on the amplifier and tweaks the gain, eventually settling in a comfortable, simple intro they've practiced enough to feel comfortable with.

Polnareff joins him on drums and grins. "We're going to rock this gig, and every other gig from now until we die a rock and roll hero's death."

Kakyoin presses what he thinks are the appropriate keys. "Probably. That'd be nice."

"Don't make me think about being around you dudes for the rest of my life. Gives me acid reflux." Jotaro inhales and pitches his voice to sing his lyrics. " _Walk, in silence._ "

"Dude," Polnareff moves to bang at a hanging tom that's not there, momentarily distracted by how much smaller this drum set is compared to his own. "You _love_ us."

Jotaro gives him his finest middle finger. " _Don't walk away, in silence._ "

Polnareff slowly gets the hang of his drums while Kakyoin finds out what every button on the makeshift synthesizer does. There's no real light in the room safe for the small flickering candles spread around the space, and it's as comfortable as he's ever felt in the bar. He can hear Josuke murmur to Okuyasu, who looks slightly more secure and comfortable than he did when first faced with the pressure of performing and can see him sipping from an actual, non-dairy drink.

While they play, increasingly louder and more steady, early birds start filing in and taking their seats at corner tables and booths.

" _My illusion, worn like a mask of self-hate,_ " and Jotaro finds himself admitting he might be willing to do this for the rest of his life. " _Confronts and then dies_. _Don't walk away._ "


	9. Blister in the Sun

_January 18, 1985._

"Dudes, these tater tots don't taste like wet, worn underwear! Tonio's back!" Polnareff plops another one on his tongue and sighs blissfully. "Ah, salt and pepper. How I've missed you."

Kakyoin stabs his own chicken and is very happy when it doesn't either fall apart into tiny little bits or expels unknown liquid. "A Trussardi classic," he concludes. He might actually be looking forward to stuffing this in his mouth, though he didn't think having Jotaro call their lunch menu options bogus and using his spoon to flick peas would ever get old.

Polnareff shoves four pudding cups onto Jotaro's tray and nearly elbows several students in the back trying to run away before Jotaro makes him pay for them himself. He shoves himself in the seat next to Avdol's with a " _tee-gee-eye-eff,_ am I right?", and Avdol sighs a heavy, weary sigh and clicks his pen more times than necessary.

"Yeah?" he prompts, but it sounds tired. He's bent over a notebook, one hand clutching his pen and one hand clutching his fork, his forehead scrunched up like his lips. Kakyoin climbs into the bench opposite them and plonks his tray down gracelessly. He fumbles with his uniform for a couple of seconds, trying to get it straightened over his seat where it's bunched up under his butt.

"Yeah," Polnareff hums. He picks up some of the greens on his plate and twirls them in between his fingers for a couple seconds. "Dude, I don't know what any of this shit is and some of it tastes like soap but _man_ , am I glad to eat real food again."

Kakyoin chews thoughtfully on a cherry tomato he plucks out of his salad. "You mean you _don't_ like daily McDonalds runs? Jean-Pierre, I had you pegged _wrong_."

"Hey, hey, _hey_! I'm a sensitive kinda guy you know!" Polnareff spits some koriander back out on the side of his lunch tray, nearly hitting Avdol's textbook. "Which is also why I'm not hitting you with the sweet, _sweet_ pegging jokes right now. _Nothing_ 's better than real food prepared with tender love and care."

Avdol snorts over his notebook. "Food snob."

"Am _not_!"

"Shut the fuck up," Jotaro adds, sitting down next to Kakyoin and dumping Polnareff's pudding cups back on his tray. Polnareff smirks and shoves two of them at Avdol, who moves one arm to reel them in. Kakyoin watches Polnareff open up his pudding cups and upend them over his potatoes with growing horror. "Is, uh... is that normal?"

Jotaro catches his line of sight. "Oh, dude. I used to think that was some French shit, but turns out? It's just him."

Avdol doesn't have to look up to add, "Don't stare for too long or it'll curse you."

"Okay, well, bag _your_ face, and yours, _and_ yours." Polnareff gleefully mashes and stirs his potatoes. "I'm pretty sure that, like always, these mashed potatoes à la pudding will cure my heartburn like magic, and at least that's better than trying to finish an _essay_ in _an hour,_ Momo."

"Okay, well. _Okay_ , you _have_ a point, but!" Avdol points his uncapped fountain pen at Polnareff's nose, the tip an inch away from coating the inside of his nostril with ink. "You have to believe in me a little, _Jean_. I watched you do it in _three_."

Kakyoin stabs a straw into his juice box. "Um, but, and of course I believe in your talents, Avdol, _but_ I really think the minimum for bullshitting an essay is just _about_ three hours, and that's only if you have an extraordinary talent for, uh, _bullshitting._ "

"I'll take that as a compliment." Polnareff eagerly shovels pudding potatoes into his open mouth and follows it up with a big gulp of milk he squeezes from the carton right onto his tongue, foregoing the straw.

Kakyoin splutters. "Don't. _Really_."

"I can bullshit if I want to," Avdol grumbles. "Three hours is the limit only if you're _not_ a winner, and I'm a winner, Noriaki."

"Albeit one who left his work to the last minute because he was too busy playing _Dig Dug_."

"Dig dug is educational."

Polnareff tries spearing three peas using only one tooth of his fork. "You dudes should hear him try to explain how playing four hours of Dig Dug is the intellectual equivalent to two weeks of physics classes."

"Which is true," Avdol retaliates. He caps his pen with a sigh and decides to start spooning up his curry and rice while it's still somewhat lukewarm. "Besides, I know for a fact Jotaro's like, three years behind homework wise, and he's not even been here that long."

Kakyoin hides his laughter in the arm of Jotaro's school uniform.

"Suspicious lack of rebuttal from the ol' teacher's menace!" Polnareff bends his chest over the table, the frills of his jacket almost, but not quite, making contact with his lunch. "Or, _huh,_ what about how, since we've met _some_ one, your attendance has gone up by, what, _eighty_ per—"

"I'll kill you for this later," Jotaro interrupts, and crumples up the bag his sandwich came in. "But actually, I was thinking about something. Like, serious."

Polnareff leans back and whistles. "Well, spit it out, guy!"

"I think my neighbour is a vampire, maybe."

Polnareff's mouth clamps shut so fast they all hear his teeth clack. Jotaro sighs when the first signs of mirth make his lips twitch and quickly wipes his hands down his face. Avdol stuffs half his naan almost directly into his throat and chews thoughtfully.

"Uh…" Kakyoin blinks and inspects his crisp packet for a bit. "Huh. Okay, so you guys know that new cafe opened near the arcade? I've been wanting to go."

"Are—" Polnareff hacks a little. "Are we just… are we just going to ignore what just happened?"

Avdol swipes the remains of his naan through the remains of his curry. "Was fully planning on ignoring that, yeah."

"Dude. I'm serious. _Dead_ serious. When have you known me to ever tell a joke _in my life_?" Jotaro punctuates his sentence with a snarl and Kakyoin grabs hold of his uniform again.

He peeks a little at Polnareff from around where he's clutching Jotaro's tricep. "I mean, he's right, Jotaro's the _least_ funny guy I know."

" _Thank_ you!" Jotaro gestures wildly at Kakyoin, who narrowly avoids fingers to the eyeballs. "This guy gets it. Look at my track record, man. I'm… how would _you_ say this? What _bullshit_ word… I'm _for cereal._ "

"For _cear_ , man." Polnareff wipes tears from his eyes with a _lot_ of flourish for a dude half on a metal bench, half on the floor. "Nobody says _for cereal_ anymore. Too many syllables." He pulls his legs up, clutching the toes of his worn shoes.

Avdol reaches out to push Polnareff's knee away from where he'd lodged it firmly into his thigh and hums, thoughtful. "So, and correct me if I'm wrong — and I _am_ prone to mishearing — _correct_ me if I'm wrong but... you _genuinely_ think your next door neighbour may be a vampire?"

Polnareff has a hard time trying not to laugh. Or maybe he's not trying at all.

Kakyoin feels Jotaro's arm flex under his palm and the clenching of Jotaro's jaw and grinding of his molars is almost audible. " _Yes_."

"Okay, so, _quickie_ question—" Polnareff breathes in deep, exhales on a giggle. " _Have_ you or have you _not_ seen this man explode and slash or turn into ashes as soon as he set foot outside?"

Jotaro huffs, and looks around, where everybody is minding their own business. "That's just it, dude," he sighs, running a hand through his hair without dislodging his hat. "He doesn't _do_ outside much."

Avdol folds his arms and nods. "Huh. Alright. That's perfectly valid, but also, _rationally_ , you know, we, uh... we can't accuse a guy of vampirism because he doesn't meet his daily recommended vitamin D intake."

"He's wicked creepy," Jotaro argues. "It's not just… it's not _just_ the sun thing. He's _freaky_ in a bad way."

Kakyoin turns the one-quarter to be face to face with him. "Yes, you've made it abundantly clear you think this man is _pretty_ weird, but this isn't a fantasy novel, Jotaro. People aren't just... _Vampires._ "

"But _also,_ " Polnareff quips, "Jojo's never spoken this much in one sitting so I'm inclined to _believe_."

"That's…" Kakyoin halts. "That's a good point actually."

Polnareff drains the rest of his milk and burps. "So let's go see this vampire man!"

"Uh, _no._ " Jotaro gets up and wipes his hands on his uniform pants. "I'm avoiding spending more time with you than I absolutely have to. Practice is a _maybe._ "

Polnareff watches him walk off with his tray and waits patiently for him to sit back down before opening his mouth again. " _Why_ , Jotaro, why must we quarrel! _Why_ must you try to keep me and your mom's Ginny Cream Ale apart?"

" _Hey_ , Polnareff, remember when you got my mom _high_?"

"Okay, okay, point!"

"So let's schedule a practice for exactly this afternoon," Avdol prompts, finishing off his drink and wiping his hands with a bunched up paper napkin. He grabs his notebook again and chews on the end of his pen. " _If_ miss Enyaba lets me leave her class alive after submitting this."

"Is it really that bad?" Kakyoin finishes up his own lunch, crinkling up his empty crisp bag. "Like, failing levels?"

Avdol grumbles. "No way, man. She just hates my guts."

"Not any more than mine though." Polnareff shifts uncomfortably in his seat. "She's all sweet and cutesy but with her dentures grinding and her eye twitching and shit? Hell _no_ am I staying in that class for over five minutes."

Avdol quickly pens down a sentence, but from Kakyoin's vantage point, it doesn't look scribbled at all. "And you never do," he quips while dotting down a full-stop.

"And I _never_ do!"  
Kakyoin laughs softly while getting up to put his own tray away. "Well, Avdol, you have like..." He squints up at the clock over the lunchroom entrance. "...half an hour? _Half_ an hour to finish that. Do you want us to, uh, shut up while you get to that?"

"No, please," — Another quick scribble in a long list of seemingly immaculate sentences — "I will absolutely die if I can't listen to Polnareff talk about the _New York Dolls_ ' influence on modern music."

Polnareff beams and sits up straighter, nearly planting his elbow in the remains of his food. "And you'd think that's sarcasm, but it's really not!"

"It's not."

Jotaro sighs and asks Kakyoin if he wants anything from the drink machine. He does.

* * *

"You—" Jotaro points threateningly at Polnareff's nose. "—are stepping on my toes."

Polnareff whines. "The hole's too small for _all_ of us! Avdol and I can go first; we're the eldest!"

"That makes a lot of sense actually," Kakyoin chirps from behind Avdol's shoulder.

They're all huddled around a golf ball-sized hole in Holly's otherwise spotless fence, Polnareff hovering over Jotaro's back to try and get a look.

"Fine." Jotaro gets out of the way, and he and Kakyoin sit back while Avdol and Polnareff smoosh cheeks over who gets to see the most.

After ten minutes or so of listening to their hushed whispering, Kakyoin gets a little tired of sitting on his haunches and aches to stretch his legs. "Hey, it really _is_ nice spying on your neighbour like this, and I'm _feeling_ way adventurous," he half whispers, "but are we sure he's even out? Or when he'll be back?"

"Yeah." Jotaro shifts around a little until he rests his knee in the grass. Kakyoin loves his pants too much for this, so his heels suffer like the rest of him. "He has this big ass car, right? With a driver and shit. Always goes out early in the morning, comes back around five."

"Yes, _please,_ when is he going to come out already? I'm being absolutely blue-balled."

"Polnareff." Kakyoin can nearly see Avdol's long-suffering look through the back of his skull. "I don't think that means what you think it means." Avdol leans his other arm around Polnareff and unto the fence warily, barely daring to put any weight on it in case it'd come tumbling down. "What's his car look like? It's past five; do you think we missed it?"

Jotaro grunts, and Kakyoin's practice with them tells him it's a negative. "Nah, you'd spot it a mile away."

"Let me see!" Kakyoin yanks at Polnareff's top a little to get his attention. "Younger people have better eyes."

Polnareff lets himself be pulled off the fence and sits his ass down on the damp, cold grass. Avdol hovers by Kakyoin's shoulder while he plasters himself to the lacquered wood.

He has to blink to focus but otherwise has a nice view of the street and driveway beyond the fence. He tucks his hair behind his ear so it doesn't get in the way of his view.

"See anything yet?"

" _No,_ Polnareff, it's been ten seconds!" He smacks Polnareff's hand away where it tugs at his arm. "Oh, wait, hang on actually! _Polnareff_ , _shut up._ "

A tall, sleek, black car rolls in their direction and stops right next to the mystery neighbour's perfectly square bushes. He makes a noise of triumph just when Avdol makes one of annoyance.

"Shit, uh… Okay, my hearing aid blew out, nobody say anything for the next five minutes."

He looks over at Avdol frowning at the small box he pulled out of his robes in concern but quickly moves back to hover his eye right in front of their peephole, just as someone steps out of the car.

Kakyoin only has the chance to marvel at the man's lavender, armpit-length curls for a couple seconds before he's moving to and opening the curbside door farthest back. The driver bows deeply, the tips of his hair nearly brushing his polished shoes, and tall legs clad in a tailored suit stretch past the door. A tall person, shoulder-length blond hair swept back without looking greasy, stepping tall-toed shoes onto to concrete. Kakyoin watches him curl his fingers around the top of the door and, he assumes, order his driver back.

It happens just when Avdol makes a small noise of triumph and a "got it!".

The man turns his head a little and looks right at their little hole in the fence.

He stares briefly, maybe half a second, into bright red eyes and the world stops. His hands freeze against the fence, suddenly clammy, and he detaches them. They're shaking when he rests them on his knees instead.

Kakyoin breathes heavily but the air gets stuck halfway down his throat, like a ball or maybe a brick, by the feel of it, and he remembers with shocking clarity the meds in his medicine cabinet he neglected to take that morning.

He feels his hands still shaking where he's clutching them in the fabric of his pants and hears Avdol say something from his right. He's saying, maybe, they can talk again, but the sound is hollow and dim through the ringing in his ears.

Kakyoin doesn't think he could say anything if he wanted to. He tries to inhale again sharply but the brick is still firmly lodged in his throat and his mind is reeling, his brain full of smoke. He feels like he might throw up.

He's hyperventilating. He recognises he is, knows the signs, and wheezing and shaking. His legs crumble and he falls forward, dizzy and hacking and still clutching his jeans. He feels Jotaro grasp his arm and wonders if he can feel Kakyoin's sweat soaking through his uniform jacket— if he's disgusted. When Kakyoin looks up, though, his eyebrows are scrunched up in concern and his lips are moving.

He shakes his head but he doesn't know what he's disagreeing to. Jotaro's hands move to his face when he doesn't _stop_ , framing it, making a little bowl around his cheeks.

He tries to focus on the movement of Jotaro's lips, tries to figure out what he's saying, and slowly but surely he finds himself matching their breathing, syncing up. He's leaning into Jotaro's hands, and he's sure that if they hadn't been there, he'd be forehead first in a clump of grass.

"What _was_ that?" Polnareff exclaims from over Jotaro's shoulder while he slowly releases Kakyoin's face. "Are you _okay_? You look like you're screaming, but, like, from your _eyes_."

Kakyoin shakes a little still, unbunching his pants in his fists and forcing his fingers to relax. "It's—, there was—" he starts, but he sounds too breathless and soft and his voice shuddering out of his lungs, so he tries again. "It's, uh. It's anxiety. It's— there's... I have anxiety. Disorder. And some other things. But that's what that was."

"Oh, dude!" Polnareff moves his arm and Kakyoin tries not to flinch but the image of bright, intimidating eyes is still right there, a little too close, and he does. Polnareff flinches immediately after. "Shit, uh, sorry man. I was going to say, like, is there anything we can do? Water?"

Kakyoin shakes his head but Jotaro wordlessly gets up, disappears into the garage, and Kakyoin assumes he's getting some for him anyway. He wills his hands to stop shaking enough to take it from him when he returns, and it works like magic.

"So, like," Jotaro starts and sits down with him again on the grass. "Is there anything you can do about it? You've never done this before." He winces. "Uh, I didn't mean— you didn't _do_ anything, but..."

Kakyoin interrupts him. "I know what you mean! I know, it's okay. I— There's... I do have, uh, pills for it, but I..." He looks down and watches a drop drip down the side of his glass and land in the space between his finger and the outside of it. "I didn't think I needed them anymore, I guess."

Avdol sits down on his other side. "I get that," he nods. "It's normal, I think. Feeling that way."

"I feel..." Kakyoin breathes in, one two three four, hold, one two, out, one two three four. "I feel really stupid."

Polnareff hops up and winces when his legs uncurl. "Well! Now we know, huh?"

"Yeah, I..." He hasn't had this much trouble making small talk in months. Since he actually made some friends, actually. "I just felt it might be weird saying it? Like you might—" Like you might think _I_ was weird, he doesn't say.

"Psh! Psh." Polnareff waves him off. "It's fine, we don't care."

Avdol butts in. "What Jean means to say is we _do_ care, but... about _you_."

"Yeah! That's totally what I said."

Jotaro grabs the glass from his hands where it's on the verge of slipping from his fingers. "Yeah. That's... now we can—"

Kakyoin waits for him to continue, but he doesn't. Instead, Polnareff picks the sentence right back up effortlessly. "Now we can help! I'll ask my therapist if she can teach me some breathing stuff, you know! For _breathing_. But, like, do you want to talk at all about what freaked you out so bad, or...?"

Kakyoin's shaking his head halfway through his last sentence, but knows how to stop this time. "No, I—... no, thank you."

"That's cool," Avdol hums. "Just, you _can_ if you want to."

He tries to find words to thank his friends, visibly struggling with his mouth open. Polnareff gets up and brushes grass off his pants. "Don't sweat it, dude. What're friends for?"

Kakyoin doesn't really know, from experience at least, but he does know he likes it so far.

"I think..." Avdol uses Kakyoin's shoulder to push himself upright, squeezing it slightly when he rises. It's comforting, Kakyoin thinks. Reminds him a little of something his father used to do, and it leaves him feeling bittersweet.

Avdol groans a little and stretches his back, shoves his hearing aid back in the inside pocket of his robe. "I _definitely_ think we've had enough practice for today, and that maybe Holly has Caramello's with my name on 'em."

"Not... if I _lick_ them." Polnareff dashes towards the open garage door and none of them make an effort to stop him.

Jotaro gets up from his knees and pulls Kakyoin up with him, steadying him when he sways, unsteady. "If he touches even _one_ of my goddamn Caramellos..."

"All these years and he still hasn't realised I will _absolutely_ eat food after he licks it." Avdol shakes his head and starts for the garage. Kakyoin follows him, knees getting steadier with every step he gets closer to the comforts that come with Jotaro's home.

It's not until they're all sunken down in the run down sofas and chairs that make their practice space as comfortable as it is that he inhales deeply and feels like his lungs are the appropriate size again.

Polnareff tinkers around on his drumset and, just so it looks and feels like they've actually gotten some practice done today, Jotaro is strumming softly on his guitar.

Kakyoin feels... tired, but comfortable and warm, and tries to count all the times he's felt like this lately on one hand.

He can't.

Their comfortable semi-silence is interrupted abruptly by Jotaro's shrill ringtone, but he hardly startles, too comfortable in his pillows. Jotaro gets up from his seat next to Kakyoin, deep, deep in their old floral couch, and pulls it from his school bag. "Yes, Kujo speaking."

Kakyoin's never heard Jotaro pick up his phone with anything more than a "yeah, what", but he contains his surprise. He makes eye contact with Polnareff, who wiggles his eyebrows from over his drum set.

Jotaro answers the person on the other side of the line. Nothing more than short, single syllable answers that tell them very little about the subject of the phone call. Jotaro's eyebrows have their characteristic furrow, and his lips are the set line Kakyoin knows he uses when he talks to teachers.

"Yes, I will let you know, thank you."

" _Aaaaaaand_?" Polnareff leans forward as much as he can without crashing into his cymbals.

"Well," Jotaro begins, crashing back down into the couch, making Kakyoin bounce a little. " _That_ was the owner of that poetry club? The one we were at last weekend. Mister, uh, _Yoshikage_."

"Yeah?" Avdol bites into a Caramello that was most definitely already open before he got to it.

Jotaro grabs his drink back from the table. "Yeah."

" _Guhhhhh_ , spit it out!" Polnareff bounces impatiently on his stool. "I'm sitting on pins and needles, here, dude!"

"And," the corners of Jotaro's mouth twitch up for less than a second, but Kakyoin catches them in the act. " _Someone_ liked our performance very much."

He takes a long sip from his coke and leans forward. "How would you guys feel about opening for _Passione_?"


	10. Go west

_January 23, 1985._

"Wow! Can't believe Avdol's late," Polnareff shouts, ducking through the garage door half an hour late for practice. Jotaro chucks a can of sprite at his chest and Polnareff catches it with an " _oof!_ Thanks dude!"

There's a chill in the room, the cold January wind hanging in the air even after Polnareff's yanked the door closed behind him, the heating system not fully able to keep up with it. Kakyoin sniffs. The mortification of other people seeing his boogers simmered down to slight embarrassment about twenty minutes ago, when his fingers started tingling from the cold.

"What's Avdol up to?" Jotaro grunts, picking Star Platinum back up from its stand.

"Just, uh…" Polnareff plonks himself down on his stool and picks up his drumsticks. "Uh, shit dude, I don't know actually. Just told me to go on ahead and he'd meet me later. I didn't think anything of it at the time but I guess he got breakfast someplace, maybe?"

Kakyoin looks up from his synth and sniffles loudly. "What'd you do?"

"Huh? I didn't do anything, I don't think." He looks thoughtful, his foot restlessly tapping at his double bass pedal. "I can't think of anything. Dude, maybe he just wanted some alone time!"

Jotaro huffs, not looking up from his guitar. "You fucked up, dude."

"Probably." Kakyoin gives up on his front panel sliders and sinks into the open seat next to Jotaro. He cracks open a can of something cold and the fizz of it hits him in the nose. "Not that I've much experience, but don't people usually fix these things with flowers and a movie date? Or maybe Avdol's a romantic dinner kind of guy."

Jotaro coughs. Polnareff stares down long enough at the skin of his bass drum for Kakyoin to feel like he maybe should have opened his mouth to fill it with his shoes instead of using it to form words. Just when he thought he was getting the hand of snarky small-talk.

"Dude, I love where you're going with this but Momo and I aren't... dating. If that _was_ where you were going. I think so. And, uh, I gotta be honest with you, I totally wouldn't mind if we were and I'd sell my liver to get a shot at it, but he's like..." Polnareff sighs wistfully, finally looking up from his drum kit. "He's at, like, a whole different level, man."

Kakyoin fumbles awkwardly for a reply, but settles on a terribly cheap "I'm sure that's not true. He might say yes if you asked!"

Polnareff looks like he sucked a lemon and Kakyoin gave it to him and suggested he try a bite, then wails dramatically and drapes himself over his high toms. Kakyoin bites his lip and looks at Jotaro with a look he hopes conveys an appropriate amount of desperation instead of the completely soul-encompassing amounts he really feels. He thinks he's succeeded.

Jotaro shakes his head and gets up, his knees creaking, and shoves his guitar at Kakyoin. He trudges to the door separating the kitchen and the garage and noisily cracks it open. Polnareff flaps his arm at him uselessly. Kakyoin winces, nervously fidgeting with Star Platinum's whammy. "Sorry, I… I just thought—"

"Don't worry about it. He's just being a baby," Jotaro grumbles, walking back in and chucking a bag of cheez doodles at the back of Polnareff's head with very little finesse. "Mom buys these solely for when he's pulling this entry level theatre class shit."

Kakyoin frowns at Polnareff's back, still curled over his drum set, occasionally letting out pitiful whines and sniffles. "I don't know, Jojo. He seems upset."

"He _has_ no feelings." Jotaro grabs Star Platinum by the neck and lifts it out of Kakyoin's lap. He strums thrice, testing the tuning. "Eat the doodles, dude. It's the extra crunchy ones."

Polnareff's back twitches. Kakyoin watches him for one, two, three seconds, and Polnareff drags his arm from underneath his chest several inches to the right to collect his bag of cheese puffs. He drags it towards himself with the very tips of his fingers and half turns to push himself up and crack it open. "Do not think I won't wallow in this _later,_ mister Frontman," he half-shouts, stuffing his hand in the bag. "When I'm done replacing my heartbreak with food."

"Yeah, yeah." Jotaro strums the first couple chords of a song Kakyoin doesn't recognise and thinks might be self-composed. It's nice. He's playing mostly high up the neck, and it's soothing in a dark way, like being inside during autumn rain. Polnareff's noisy chewing sounds are drowned out by a nice, peaceful static in his brain Kakyoin connects to feeling content and a little lazy.

His toes froze about ten minutes ago so he toes off his shoes and wiggles them around in his socks. He grabs one of the magazines Polnareff keeps bringing and piling up on the little side table in the corner, half-turns on the sofa, and politely and subtly shoves his feet up to midfoot under Jotaro's thighs.

Several pages of a special on the Police and photos of Duran Duran on tour later, Kakyoin gently wiggles his toes to shake off pins and needles. Jotaro snaps his A string. "Ffff-shoot—"

"You know," Polnareff interrupts, "we really do do a lot of goofing off for a band that's going to open for a band that's, like, actually _known_ by people."

Kakyoin turns the page to look at the margin notes Avdol'd added to the article on Cyndi Lauper. "I'm having trouble with my sliders. Avdol's really good with them."

"Dude, you don't know how to work your own synth?" Polnareff wipes his cheesy fingers on his muscle pants. He strokes the skin of his bass drums. "I'm so glad I just have to hit this baby to make some noise. None of that knob stuff."

"Anything you touch automatically becomes knob stuff," Jotaro mumbles, picking a new string from a small roll of them he keeps in his bag and fumbling to untangle it. "'Cause you're a knob."

"I—" Kakyoin debates on whether to comment or let it slide. "Huh. I, uh, I prefer knobs over sliders, actually. I think they're easier to work with." He pauses. "I'm making this worse, right?"

"Definitely still talking about dicks," Polnareff supplies.

"Alright then." Kakyoin puts his magazine down and sits up. He tucks his feet underneath his knees and leans his elbows near his knees. "So, Passione, right?"

Jotaro finishes tuning his newly replaced string and strums all of them once. "Right."

"Mysterious, mysterious Passione." Polnareff fiddles with one of his drumsticks and sticks the other in his pocket. "Those mysterious Passione boys."

Kakyoin frowns, suddenly self-conscious. He wrings his hands together in his lap. "Am I the only one who knows, um, jack shit about this band?"

"I know their lead singer is like… deadly hot."

Jotaro does something that might constitute an eyeroll in Polnareff's direction. "Which one, hoser. There's two."

"Ah. I recant my statement and rephrase to say I, _too_ , know jack shit." Polnareff sheepishly taps his bass pedal. "We're not really as _in_ with the hip and happening as we like to pretend."

Kakyoin sighs. "I think you're the only one who thinks you _are_."  
"I know some of them are really tall, and some of them are, like, real small," Jotaro provides, shifting his guitar in his grip.

He starts playing — _sarcastically_ , Kakyoin thinks, if that's at all possible — a tune on his guitar Kakyoin faintly recognises as a Japanese children's song he learnt when he was little.

"Uh, _thanks_ , that'll be a big help, I guess. At least…" Kakyoin hesitates, stares at the shitty wall posters Jotaro's undoubtedly picked out. "Since none of us knew who they were, at least none of us will be too starstruck to perform, so that's… that's a plus."

Polnareff exaggeratedly swings his legs around to turn himself around by ninety degrees and get up off his stool. "Silver Linings Broriaki with the rescue, huh? But _this guy_ is going to _rescue_ some cold fizzy drinks from the Kujo kitchen."

Jotaro stops strumming in the middle of a furious string of F-chords. "Get me a coke."

"I didn't—" Kakyoin weakly calls after Polnareff disappearing out of the door. "Is that my nickname now? Is there— can I object to this still or is it, like, too late?"

"Too late, dude." Jotaro pulls his legs up on the sofa without missing a note. His nursery rhyme playing seamlessly flows back into the low, soothing plucking of strings he was doing earlier, and he makes himself comfortable with his back against the armrest, extending his legs to fit comfortably unerneath Kakyoin's knees. The blood in Kakyoin's legs is slowly being replaced with pins and needles but he feels too comfortable the way he is to stretch them. It's fine like this.

He picks up a new magazine from the pile and attempts to ignore the cramping in his ankles. He's comfortable for about five seconds, but then startles up when there's a noise outside he identifies vaguely as Avdol cursing.

Jotaro's garage door creaks and rolls up and open loudly, and the first thing they see is a dog. A small one, with more wrinkles condensed in its neck than in the entire rest of his body. A little like God botched a Boston Terrier, and it's right here, dragging its legs and being very unhappy about being leashed. Avdol walks in, slowly, to give the dog time to follow, right when Polnareff busts out of the kitchen into the garage balancing a couple bottles and cans in his arms. He looks positively delighted and drops a cola can Kakyoin hopes isn't for him on the floor.

"Dude! This morning? Sorry for whatever I did, man. Didn't mean to, and all that. I'm a shithead, you know me."

Avdol frowns and stops next to Kakyoin's synthesizer. "Huh? You didn't do anything this time, Jean."

Jotaro picks his gentle fingerpicking back up and mumbles ' _this time_ ' under his breath, giving Kakyoin a look he interprets as a bit smug. Polnareff chooses to interpret the look as gay.

"Dudes! I _told_ you I was free of blam— _whaaat_ is… _that_?" Polnareff bends his knees and nearly folds himself in half to get a proper look at the creature semi-sheltered behind Avdol's legs. "Mutt?"

"Boston terrier," Avdol gently corrects, picking the dog up and setting it down on the corner chair usually reserved for empty soda cans. "I think."

He pulls the decorative doily off the back of the armchair and drapes it over the dog quickly settling down for a nap. Kakyoin finally unfolds his legs with a wince and effectively traps Jotaro's feet with his legs. "Are you keeping it?"

"Well…" Avdol drops down on Kakyoin's empty stool and fiddles with his slider panel. "I don't think he has owners. I've been watching him for a while, and he's always at the same spot, so… I'm assuming, of course."

"We can't!" Polnareff quickly throws the leftover coke can to Kakyoin before he drops that too. "I'm not a dog scientist! None of us are! What do dogs even _eat_?"

" _Dog_ food, Jean."

" _We_ —" He gestures wildly back and forth from Avdol to himself. "—We live in an apartment _six stories high_ in a shady neighbourhood and can sometimes afford _only_ cup noodles. Our balcony is _detachable._ I can't believe _I'm_ being expected to be the voice of reason here."

Kakyoin gestures for Polnareff to settle down and sit. "He _kind_ of has a point."

Avdol finishes resetting Kakyoin's sliders to their previous settings and looks over to the small, thin dog sleeping comfortably on the sofa. "I'll take on more shifts. It'll be fine."

"That's… not... _Fine_ , alright." Polnareff drops down on his stool and cracks open his root beer. "I've exhausted all my common sense. How's Sparky for a dog's name?"

Jotaro hums and taps his chin in fake thought. Kakyoin feels his toes curl underneath his thighs. "I'm debating between _fuck_ no or just... _no_. Emphasis versus short 'n sweet."

"Well, you just don't know _anything,_ " Polnareff counters, slurping at the neck of his bottle. "What were your cats' names again? Oh yeah—"  
"I think _Smith_ is a nice one. He's got the look of a Smith."

"Momo, he…" Polnareff closes his eyes and breathes deeply. "He does _not_ look like a Smith. He's a Richard, at best."

They all watch Sparky-Smith-Richard sleep soundly, his ears twitching a little and his jowls moving with every deep exhale. Polnareff gets up and walks around his drum set to kneel next to the chair he's sleeping on. He stares for a while, slowly finishing his drink. He's around his final swig when he thoughtfully puts his bottle down and turns to Avdol. "What about Iggy? You know, like the singer guy? He married Suchi Asano. Him."

"Iggy," Avdol mutters. He repeats it, testing the name out. "Sounds nice. I like it."

"Sweet!" Polnareff finishes his bottle and settles it down next to the chair. Iggy makes low noises deep in his throat, every one of his extremities twitching before he groggily opens his eyes. He stretches lazily and looks up at his audience. Polnareff snickers. "What's up, dog?"

Iggy farts.

* * *

 _January 26th, 1985._

"Very confused about why I'm giving up my free Saturday hours to hang out with you zeeks." Jotaro apathetically folds the toes of his overpriced shoes over the edge of Avdol's tasteful coffee table.

"I'll tell you why," Polnareff sings gleefully, walking in from the tiny kitchen carrying an over-full tray. "'Cause you _love_ us, but you _wuuuuuuuv_ only _some_ of us!"

Jotaro yanks a can from the tray without looking at the label. "I despise you."

"What _else_ were you going to do?" Kakyoin picks something from the tray when Polnareff urges him to, wobbling it dangerously in front of his face. "Moodily pet your cats and blast the Cure?"  
"No." _Yes_ , Kakyoin mentally counters.

Avdol sits on his burgundy sofa and half of him disappears into the pillows, cradling a mug containing… tea, possibly. "Jotaro, hat off."

"You _always_ … God _dam_ — fine."

Avdol takes a long sip from his mug. "I love these little get-togethers. Really good for band dynamics."

"Speaking of band dynamics!" Kakyoin pulls his legs closer to his own seat, using the tip toes of his shoes to prop up his knees. "Uh, so, like," he starts, pulling a handful of folded flyers from his coat pocket, "I've been looking around for some info on this band we're opening for, right?"

"Uh, huh?" Polnareff leans over to stuff a handful of saltine crackers into his mouth. Kakyoin thinks about how half his conversations with Polnareff take place while eating. Either Polnareff eats a lot, or he should find better times to come with interesting tidbits. Both, probably.

" _And_ they're apparently really popular." He rifles through his stack and produces a flashy flyer announcing Passione in concert in big, white letters on a background of purples and blacks. He spreads them out over the low table surface and tries to flatten them a little with his palms.

"Uh, someone at the library was selling their bras for a ticket. These guys've been number one nationwide for several weeks! Sold quite a lot of CD's too, apparently."  
Jotaro frowns and stops his own handful of crackers halfway to his mouth. "What the fuck is a _cee-dee_?"

"It's, uh, a _Compact Disk_. Like a record, but smaller? There's songs on it too, but like, _more_."

"Inquiry," Polnareff mumbles around crumbs. "Will I be able to play these here _cee-dees_ on my rickety record player?"

Kakyoin leans his cheek in his palm and taps it with his index finger. "Uh, no. No, I don't think you can. I think you have to buy a special... _thing_ to play them."

"That…!" Polnareff smacks himself in the knees. "That definitely sounds like a lie. Record players play _anything_. It played the two halves of Avdol's Hall  & Oats record."

At their questioning looks, Avdol sighs and sinks down deeper into his tacky sofa. "Iggy _loves_ records."

"He's never destroyed any of _my_ records," Polnareff adds smugly. "He just farts and pees on me, which is totally manageable."

"Right."

"They sold a lot of… _cee-dees_ even though nobody owns any fucking thing that'll play them?" Jotaro sniffs. "Must be good or whatever.."

Kakyoin looks away from the crumpled flyers. "I hear they're really big in Europe and Asia too."

"Europe. Of course Europe would be into that weird glam gothic opera shit."

Polnareff bends closer and presses himself nearly nose to nose with the lead singer duo posing on the posters. "These guys are, like, really goth though. Or, _some_ of them? I'm not sure _what_ image they're trying to go for. Why'd they want us? Like, they specifically asked for us, right?"

Jotaro's mouth is definitely too full of saltines to answer. He nods.

Polnareff folds his arms over his chest. "Right. So I'm mystified, 'cause we're not— well, not _all of us_ are—"

Jotaro swallows his very dry mouthful and grimaces. "Call me goth _one_ more time." He points at Polnareff threateningly. "And _no,_ you _can't_ wear your tie-dye."

Polnareff sits up rod-straight and puts his hand to his right nipple. " _Not_ that I was trying to get to that, but no, I will not wear my tie-dye. American's honour."

"You're _French_! You, like, eat _frogs_ and bread and shit. Onion soup."

"Oh, please, I haven't had a frog in _yea_ — wait, Jotaro, do you…" Polnareff looks at him in mock-sympathy, tilting his head and reaching out to put his hand on Jotaro's shoulder. "Do you _not_ eat bread?"

Jotaro rolls his eyes and moves out of the way before he's forced into human contact. "Do _not_ touch me. It was a hyperbole, or something."

"Jotes, Jojo, listen—" He leans forward, arm outstretched, nearly bending himself in half, until Jotaro is at the limit of how much he can physically move while still in his seat, and clasps his shoulder, looking him in the eye. "I will not wear a tie-dye."

"Swear it."

"On you failing English class, I will not wear my tie-dye."

Jotaro yanks his arm off his shoulder like he can tell Polnareff only _sometimes_ washes it after going to the bathroom. "Not good enough."

" _What_? Dude, you _are_ failing _._ " Polnareff sits back and hums. "Alright, okay. I swear, on my dear, dead baby sister and _maman_ , I will _not_ wear tie-dye."

"I'll take it."

"This has been riveting," Avdol cuts in, setting his mug down on the only available coffee table space left, " _but_ we keep ending up in this bunk situation where we have _no_ songs and our only option is doing covers of songs we think of when we feel like it, and I think that's a situation that needs fixing."

"Yeah, we… this always seems to happen. _Maybe_ we should think of some more original material?" Kakyoin settles back in his chair and looks at Jotaro. "That song you were playing earlier — that sounded nice!"

"It's—" Jotaro coughs. "It's a work in progress, but I have some lyrics to it, I guess."

" _And_ we've still got half a book full of Polnareff's tragic death ballads-"

"Damn, Skippy!" Polnareff jabs his own thumb into his chest. "And I haven't even shown you my _secret_ stash of notebooks yet. It's a never-ending stream of misery."

Iggy saunters in on his short, stumpy little legs and walks to the middle of the room. He yawns, stretches, looks Polnareff dead in the eye, and pees. Polnareff jumps up and exclaims in outrage. "Dude, this dog is _buggin'_ , _c'est quoi, ce bordel_ —"

"Jean-Pierre!"

" _Momo_!" Iggy does something that might be a smirk on a human face and walks up to Polnareff's seat, taking his chance to hop up on the pillows before Polnareff can sit back down. Polnareff gestures at him wildly. Iggy is undisturbed. "You need to get your dog under control! There's not enough cool words for this shit I can use, and I'm going to _kirk_ out if he chews up my pants, dude."

"Oh? So he's _my_ dog now?" Avdol calmly folds his arms and crosses his legs. "I seem to remember you being _very_ fond of him when he got to my cards."

"I only like him when he's not eating _my_ shit, doy!"

Iggy growls at Polnareff until he takes a step away from the chair. Polnareff looks at him incredulously but sinks down in the cushion next to Avdol regardless, while Avdol gets up to get toilet roll and carpet cleaner. Iggy smacks his lips, drool dripping from his jowls, and looks at Jotaro, self-satisfied and comfortable. "I don't take that kind of shit from dogs," he grumbles, staring back unblinkingly.

"Well, a lot happened in the past five minutes." Kakyoin sips daintily from his can. "But luckily, none of it happened to me."

Avdol comes back with heavy cleaning supplies and starts work on the beige carpeting covering the floor from start of hallway to end of living room. "About practice," he starts, dumping Aquamist on the wet spot, "I took on a bunch of extra shifts next week and the week after. Jean too."

Polnareff nods solemnly. "The sharp, wretched claws of capitalism, firmly in my buttcheeks most bodacious."

"Right." Avdol dumps a heap of toilet paper on top of the wet spot in a very irresponsible form of stain cleaning. "Running out of savings and all. It's only for two weeks and we'll still come in the weekends, yeah?"

Polnareff nods enthusiastically. "Yeah! We'll be back before you know it."

Kakyoin begins to nod before Jotaro speaks up. "Fine, whatever, as long as you dudes promise to stop by for dinner or lunch or whatever more. Mom keeps asking me how you're doing. How am I supposed to know."

Avdol gets up, dusting off his knees. He sits back down next to Polnareff and gives Jotaro the most gentle smile Kakyoin's ever seen. "We will."

* * *

Two hours later, when Jotaro and Kakyoin leave together after Kakyoin's wrapped himself back up in his four layers, Kakyoin laughs and looks up and sideways. "That was awfully kind of you, Jojo."

"I've never been kind in my life."

Kakyoin pretends he doesn't see his lips twitch upwards, and in the later hours of January's last Saturday, thinks quietly to himself how Jotaro's smiles do look awfully nice. Rare as they are.


	11. Smalltown boy

_February 12, 1985._

Jean Pierre Polnareff stares at the slightly condensed window high up the wall of the second floor bathroom and thinks about how to legally murder a person. Hasn't really been able to come up with anything yet, though. He's never been really good at the murder business. He's also thinking about Mohammed Avdol, and about his apple juice back in their home. He's having some trouble focusing on just one thing, actually. Might be the weed.

He takes a long, deep drag from his bud. He thinks about his parents.

He doesn't think about them _too_ often. Tries not to, actively, and it's really only when he's hot-boxing a half-sunlit room of three by three that his thoughts sometimes slip away from him. He lets himself remember his sister's warm smile, a mirror of his mother's, at his graduation day. He doesn't remember his father. He rubs his eyes until he can see shapes on the back of his lids and when he opens them again, the sun streaming in through the windows burns his retinas.

He thinks about Avdol.

Polnareff huffs, peers through the blue-green smoke he's filled the room with. He hates smoking, actually. Likes edibles much better. He pulls his shoes closer to himself, leans against the bathroom stall which is very unlocked and for some reason all swing inward, and tragically and gracelessly falls backwards.

The floor near the toilets most definitely smells like chlorine and slightly more distinctly, piss, which is absolutely going to seep into his hair, but he feels more at home here at the moment than he did in his classroom half an hour ago trying to be an ace student.

There's a stain on the ceiling. A big, fat brown one from possibly the most popular bathroom one floor above the one he's currently having his terribly rolled doobie in. Makes him think of Iggy peeing in his boots, which makes him snort and frown at the same time, because Iggy's become equivalent to home but he _loved_ those _boots,_ damn it.

"Polnareff—"

His name bounces off the walls and startles him into launching himself face first into the side of the grody stall. "Merde, _fuck_ – " He stares at the door-opening, absolutely scandalised. " _Dude_ , give a bro some warning!"

Kakyoin's lilting chuckle dances into the bathroom and he makes eye contact with Polnareff sitting halfway-up on the floor tiles. "That _was_ the warning. Are you okay? That sounded _super_ hollow."

"Ah, _that_ is 'cause I cracked my empty skull on the bathroom door, mon ami!" He sits up, but stays on the floor. Kakyoin takes pity and walks in, crouching but not sitting.

"Your daily three-hour gel treatment missed a bunch of hairs, Polnareff. You look _debauched._ " Kakyoin gives him a look Polnareff pretends not to be able to read. Polnareff looks up at him sheepishly. " _Scandalised,_ first of all. My gel-routine is _parfait._ No, no, my man, this is the damage of an hour's worth of Alessi out for _blood_ , dude. Mine, specifically, duh." He stretches his legs and crosses them nonchalantly at the ankles. "You should deffo duck your head low and chill in here with me for a while. You're too young and rad to get boxed by a 'zoid like him."

Kakyoin shoves his legs, Polnareff's tall platform heel dragging over the tiles with a little screech. "I've no issue with him, Polnareff. I make my faces behind his back instead of flipping him off because he tells me I need a hall pass."

"Which was _bull_ ," Polnareff defends himself, but without much effort put in. "I just had to pee, dude. He thinks all I use the bathrooms for is smoking weed, which is _true_ , but it's none of _his_ biz. Also, I forgot you're, like, a model student and shit. What're you doing hangin' out with _us_ , man! Weird."

"Because I've unfortunately grown fond of you. But if someone offered me a small packet of nerds if I shaved your entire head and forced you to wear your underwear over it for two weeks, I would. Also, _what_ is that smell?"

Polnareff scoffs. "We're in a public college toilet, Tenmei."

"No, no. It's like," Kakyoin scrunches up his nose, crinkling his lips. "Sweet-ish? Heavy."

"Ah, _bro,_ that's weed, dude."

Kakyoin frowns. "Huh?"

" _Weed_. Pot. Grass, mope, dope, marijuana, you know?"

"I know _of_ it." Kakyoin finally stops crouching uncomfortably and sits down next to him, butt on the grungy tiles, leaning against the section of wall in between two toilet stalls. "You should open a window or something."

Polnareff blows out a mouthful of grey smoke in the direction of said, very closed window. "Well, see, dude, that _kind of_ defeats the purpose of hot-boxing, which is to get literally as high as fucking possible. Open windows kinda let the good stuff escape, you know."

"Ah, of course. You are so knowledgeable in the art of smoking pot, Polnareff. I should have never doubted you," Kakyoin drawls as sarcastically as Polnareff thinks he's able, but who knows what he's capable of, then heaves a sigh and seems to almost immediately regret it.

"I've always been scholastically inclined." Polnareff takes a deep drag from his bud. "Any roads, I have like, an hour 'fore Alessi figures out I'm in here and I gotta motor, so in the meantime, yes, my bro and friend, you may partake in this devil's lettuce with me."

"Absolutely did not ask."

Polnareff traces a small, artfully done carving of a dick with the very tips of his fingers. "I'm very good at reading people," he mutters distractedly, taking out his drafting compass to add testicles. Kakyoin watches.

"Oh, I'm _so_ sure. Hey, add some details to the head. Would really make it stand out."

Polnareff adds some very long hairs to the ball sack. "Dude, you're so right. Whoever did this is such an amateur. _Also_ , should I make it look like it's peeing?"

He begins drawing droplets as soon as Kakyoin's chin drops in a nod. He's halfway a nice little stream in the direction of a heart with two students' names in it, nose nearly pressed into the plastic laminate, when the shrill sound of the bell signals the end of the lecture Polnareff managed to successfully skip. "Now we're _both_ criminals," he reminds Kakyoin smugly. Kakyoin exhales loudly and plonks down on his uniform-knees.

"I think everyone expected me to go down this path as soon as I sat down at your lunch table." He reaches out briskly, palm up. "Compass."

"Ah, I'll leave it to the _artist,_ shall I," Polnareff drawls, placing it on his hand. He half turns, pressing his knee into the toilet bowl and taking a drag from the cigarette he'd been letting burn up while working on his masterpiece. He tilts his head up to be able to blow a mouthful of smoke into the room without giving Kakyoin a face full of it. Kakyoin starts on an art nouveau frame for their dick-collaboration. He adds detail to a flower curling inward. Polnareff inhales.

" _So._ Are you coming to the big Jotaro Kujo birthday bash this afternoon?"

The drafting compass stops. "The what?"

Polnareff mournfully taps the multitude of ashes collected at the end of his bud on the toilet rim. "You know, Mickey Dee's. He always tells us to fuck off. We drag him there anyways. It's a riot."

"I _don't_ know. I've only know you for– No, I mean like… it's his birthday?"

"Oh! _Duh._ " Long drag. "Heh, _dude_ , yeah. He never tells anyone. His mom told me during the _infamous_ weed brownie incident, which got me banished from the Kujo Kitchen. Though I'm sure she would've told me if I'd just _asked_ , but like, that's against the code of bros, which states not to enquire parental figures about personal info." Smoke leaks from his lips whenever he opens them, and he lets his exhale run its natural course throughout his sentences. He ashes his cigarette. " _So_."

Kakyoin grabs for his school bag and pulls out a pencil case with markers. "So?"

"Mickey _Dee's_ , dude! It'll be a like a date, but with Avdol and me there too." He gasps, hand to his chest. " _Double_ date."

"That doesn't make me want to go, jackass." Light peach shading on the scrotum.

Polnareff leans in in an attempt to make eye-contact, but Kakyoin is a veteran at avoiding that sort of thing. " _Jotaro_ 'll be there."

"Duh, of course. It's his birthday. Ridiculous how you think that's an incentive."

"I _know_ it is, dude." Polnareff laughs, breathing smoke onto their little dick wall on accident. "You're so bad at being coy. Goo-goo eye him where I _can't_ see it next time, dweeb."

"Jean, I've never been coy in my life."

Polnareff snorts. "Exactly."

Kakyoin throws back an "ugh," but without much feeling. "Alright, alright," he sighs, 'I'll show." He almost manages to sound like he has a million other things he'd rather be doing (decidedly untrue), and Polnareff is continuously impressed by his ability to make others believe what he wants them to, when he wants them to. Polnareff's own schemes aren't that elaborate, existing mostly of being loud, distracting and silly.

"Nice, nice. Sure he'll be stoked. Hey," Polnareff waves his cigarette in Kakyoin's peripheral. "Want some weed?"

Kakyoin is quiet for a while, and Polnareff confidently pretends to be able to read him. Kakyoin runs his fingers over the scratches in the wall for a bit, testing to see if the markers dried properly, if they'd be able to, and opens his mouth. "You know," he says. "Why not."

Polnareff very quickly resigns himself to the fact that sharing his weed with his friend will make it run out twice as fast. He sits, back against the stall wall, and props his legs up on the toilet. It's not a comfortable fit, like Polnareff attempting to squeeze into most things sized for a normal human being isn't a comfortable fit, and sticks out the hand holding his bud. Kakyoin takes it from him and immediately holds it like an honour student taking their SATs holds a pencil.

It's very easy to imagine him sitting in a large gymnasium, hiding behind his bang and anxiously tapping his fingertips on his test paper. Polnareff wordlessly adjusts Kakyoin's fingers. Kakyoin bring his wide lips to the tip, and wets it, pinches it closed. He looks briefly affronted. Polnareff laughs. "Dude, you spit too much. Hang on." He readjusts Kakyoin's fingers. "Lips against your fingers. Keep 'em there. Don't put it in your mouth, end of your lips only. Breathe in. Easy."

He inhales, far too deeply, too hard. Polnareff watches his joint burn down unevenly and Kakyoin's eyes water dangerously. Sees him gag a little, splutter, eventually cough, settle down and inhale again. He hands Polnareff his cigarette with his eyes slightly pinched. "That burns, you know."

Polnareff laughs. "Yeah, I know."

Kakyoin settles down next to him on the tiles. "I'm thirsty."

"Should get a drink, dude." He passes Kakyoin his bud again. Kakyoin doesn't get up to get a drink and Polnareff fingertip-traces the Pietà onto the toilet rim. He runs out of space really fast. A couple minutes pass with them slowly and crookedly burning down the cigarette. Kakyoin stares at the wall for several more of those minutes. "Hey."

Polnareff reaches for his book bag with one hand and very little expended effort. He takes out a black marker he's only ever used to vandalise public property. "Yeah?"

"Do you ever think about how big our hands are?" He stares at them and spreads his fingers in front of his face. "They're like bowls."

"You know, Tenmei," Polnareff muses. "I do. I do think about that." He frowns when he runs out of space on his second attempt at art, pulls the toilet lid down, and starts a third, smaller Pietà on top of it with his marker. "You ever think about how, like, when you lick your fingers, you're basically being a wet wipe?"

"You know, Jean-Pierre," Kakyoin mumbles. "I don't. I don't think about that. That looks nice."

Polnareff finishes shading Mary's dress, but messes up on Jesus' fingers. "Thanks. I live to spread the arts."

They slowly finish the remainder of Polnareff's cigarette until there's less than half an inch of it left and they're forced to pass it between them like it's fragile, explosive, and they're on a mission for the special forces. After the remainder of it burns up and he mournfully flings the final ashes into the toilet bowl, Polnareff takes his headphones off from where he has them flung around his neck. He offers them to Kakyoin, and looks at his walk-man, trying to decipher what he'd put in there before he'd decided to get extremely high. He can't. Kakyoin takes the headphones and shoves the crappy thing onto his big ears. He looks like he feels calm for the first time in his entire life, and Polnareff marvels at how Kakyoin's shoulders aren't naturally as close to his chin as he thought. Polnareff hits play and Kakyoin doesn't even think to startle. He turns up the volume. Alessi doesn't open the door until right before the end of the tape.

* * *

"This always fucking– Blondie has the _worst_ luck," Polnareff moans, attempting to rewind is entirely mangled and tangled cassette tape with a chewed-up pen. "This was the only one where Atomic didn't have fucking Casey fucking _Casem_ at the start and finish. What do they want me to do, pay money for a tape. No. _No_ , dude." He mournfully fingers the curled and snarled up mess. "Hell no."

Jotaro tries to stuff his hands deeper down his pockets despite his seat-belt being tragically in the way and his pants too tight to try while sitting down. "I can't fucking believe you got Kakyoin high."

" _Would_ you believe it," Polnareff pokes the very tip of his tongue out from in between his lips and twists his pen. "Just found my weed lying around on the floor. Immediately just rolled a joint with it. The dude's a natural."

"Yeah, won't believe it, actually, no." Avdol parks them as close by the local McDonald's as he can get on a Tuesday past five PM. "You'd never leave your weed lying around."

Polnareff flings the cassette tape down the back of the van. They hear it thunk down on his drum set. "I'm just _so_ scatter-brained, I guess."

Next to him, Kakyoin sits doubled-over, giggling and clutching his sides. He laughs so hard he slides a little ways down in his seat and shoves his knees into the back of the driver's. He gleefully wipes his eyes. "I don't think I've felt empathy towards another human being since I was born."

"That's nice, dear," Avdol mumbles, unbuckling his seat-belt. He reaches around to help Kakyoin with his.

Jotaro sits ramrod straight in the passenger seat. He plucks at the brim of his hat. "Can't we do the McDrive?"

"No Jotaro, we _can't_ do the McDrive, 'cause then _how_ are we going to go inside and get a nice table booth." Polnareff jubilantly curls himself around the side of Jotaro's seat to get his seat-belt buckle. Jotaro slaps at his arm. "How – ow. _Dude. How_ will we get the guy in the mascot suit to sing Happy Birthday to you."

Avdol slams the van door shut and raises his voice slightly above his average soothing tone so his company can clearly hear. " _Speaking_ of Em Cee Dee's, guess who found something to fund his new gaming console."

" _No_." Polnareff's eyes go comically wide while he drags Kakyoin out of the backseat by his uniform like a baby on a leash inside an airport. " _No_ fucking way."

They follow Avdol across the parking lot. "Way," he throws back over his shoulder.

"Terence fucking d'Arby, working at a beloved children's institution," Jotaro grumbles incredulously. "He fucking _hates_ kids."

Kakyoin shoulders himself in under Jotaro's arm and through the push-pull door. "Who's this?"

"Dickhead," Jotaro replies, at the same time as Polnareff mutters, "Dipshit."

Kakyoin bursts into hysterical laughter.

They find a free-standing booth in the middle of the room, decidedly not corner, which was a very ambitious goal for a peak hour fast food chain dinner to begin with. Jotaro immediately squishes himself at the far end of their bench instead, pulling up his collar and glaring at people who might seem like they recognise him from some eight AM class he went to maybe once, at the start of his high school career, when he was bright-eyed and idealistic.

Avdol and Kakyoin walk to the front to order, something they've rehearsed so often nobody needs to say what burger and sauce they want out loud anymore for it to register. Polnareff sits across from Jotaro, also routine and rehearsal, and plants his elbows on the recently-cleaned table.

"Your dad home again?" he asks, and Jotaro's face doesn't move a muscle—rehearsed.

"Yeah."

"Sucks."

"Yeah."

"Why's it suck?" Kakyoin walks up to their table and drops an armful of napkins onto its surface. He squeezes in next to Jotaro and begins folding them into all sorts of shapes and animals. Jotaro takes one artfully shaped like a koi and sets it down by his elbow, protected from grease and Polnareff's sauce-covered hands.

Jotaro looks at it for a little while. "Because he's an asshole and he doesn't give a fuck."

"Oh." Kakyoin takes longer to fold an owl than he usually would have. "About you?"

Jotaro mumbles an, "I guess," manages to not look upset at all, completely neutral about the information, and carries on. "Mom likes when he makes his twice-a-year stops, though."

"Plus," Avdol stops by their table and Kakyoin hurries to relieve him of one of the two trays balancing on his forearms. "Sir Joestar always stops by after."

Polnareff lights up at the name. "Yeah! Mister Joseph is awesome, dude. I asked him to be my grandpa and he asked me to draft up the papers. We'd be brothers, dude. Brothers by law."

"Shut up, dude. My heartburn." Jotaro pokes him in the forearm. Polnareff is still uncertain whether Jotaro _actually_ gets heartburn when he says shit like that, so he keeps his mouth closed, just to be sure.

Avdol pushes himself in the half-space next to Polnareff, making them somewhat like four very large men in a clown car. They're all afraid to open the door.

"He's cool," Avdol argues, dividing their loot, shoving two boxes of chicken nuggets and a happy meal into Polnareff's elbow, disrupting Kakyoin's bungled attempt at folding a small elephant out of weak two-ply napkins.

Kakyoin stares very intently at his filet o' fish and opens the top of his strawberry milkshake. "There's plants in here."

"You're high," Avdol supplies.

"Yeah."

Jotaro grumbles, taking his big mac menu. "Ugh, no. Every time he meets me he tries to hug me or some shit, and then tries to give me cash. Fuck that."

Polnareff pokes around his Happy Meal for the included toy. "Okay dude, underlined, you _hate_ free money and human affection, but _I'm_ not an alien, so personally, I'd – oh, _man,_ Hamburglar race car again. Lame."

"I like being left alone," Jotaro counters. Polnareff thinks he doesn't know the difference between being left alone and sitting in silence with company.

Kakyoin comments on that, and Jotaro replies, but Polnareff doesn't listen and is instead incredibly focused on Avdol's upper arm, which is pressed into his own, along with most of the rest of his body. He stares at him for a little too long and Avdol looks back and winks. While he tries to figure out whether that was a flirt or a regular Momo Thing, he watches Avdol use the straw of his coke to pick the pickles off his big mac sandwich because he's too polite or nervous (Polnareff hasn't figured out yet) to ask for a new one without them on.

He doesn't figure out whether it was a flirt or not, and he also thinks someone in the booth behind them is getting broken up with.

He picks up his drink in an effort to hide his uncomfortable grimace. Someone's audibly crying and, like some big fat cosmic joke, God pointing a massive finger down and laughing at him, Avdol hooks his ankle around his.

Jotaro coughing very loudly drags his focus away from the frantic hurried apologising and offering of tissues and back to present company. Kakyoin has his shirt tucked halfway into his Jordache jeans, and Jotaro's eyes are watery and his hacking sounds like something very closely resembling–

"Oh my _god_." Polnareff incredulously lowers his banana milkshake. "You made him laugh."

"I thought he was dying," Kakyoin mumbles sheepishly. Jotaro huffs, and puffs, coughs a couple times more and then reaches out for Polnareff's drink, pops the top off and downs half of it. Kakyoin moves to gently thump at his back.

"He doesn't laugh often. Or, hack," Avdol supplies.

Kakyoin weakly bashes at Jotaro's shoulder blades. "I can tell."

Polnareff stares incredulously at the moist evidence of a very hearty laugh in the corners of Jotaro's eyes. "What did you _do_?"

"Uh," Kakyoin answers helpfully. He self-consciously reaches to tuck his Synchronicity '83 World Tour shirt back into his high-waisted jeans. Jotaro gathers himself visibly, coughing and straightening his back. He picks up his burger. "So, you got spit on, huh?"

Polnareff splutters. "Wha– Pardon."

"I was telling him about Alessi finding us in the bathroom." Kakyoin looks only vaguely guilty. The other parts of his face are scrunched up in very poorly concealed amusement. Jotaro swings his arm over the back of his and Kakyoin's bench in what would be a very classic move were it anyone else doing the swinging. He leans closer to Kakyoin conspiratorially. "He did really sick impressions."

"I did some mediocre impressions," Kakyoin corrects him. "And with only mild but visible spittle involved."

Jotaro pitches his voice up slightly and pinches his nose. "It smells like Woodstock in here! Jean-Pierre, open the fucking window."

Polnareff takes another bite of his burger because he's determined to not make this day any weirder than it already is, and he paid for this, so he'll eat his processed meat even if he chokes on it. He decides on a whim to reach across the table for Kakyoin's half-eaten sandwich and stuff it into his mouth to join his own thoroughly chewed one. Kakyoin stops halfway through a very long and noisy slurp of his drink. "I was just eating that."

"Word?" Polnareff sticks out his tongue, showing the remnants. Kakyoin scrunches up his face in disgust.

"Grody. Keep it." Kakyoin pushes himself out of his seat with his palms. " _I_ _'m_ getting another burger. Maybe a menu. Why does marijuana make you so _hungry?_ "

"It contains THC, which targets your brain's olfactory bulbs, heightening your senses and stimulating your appetite. Also, dopamine." He processes Kakyoin has been calling the devil's leaf 'marijuana' for several very long hours, and adds, "nerd."

Kakyoin flips him off. Polnareff watches him walk to the counter and then sets his chin on his hands, making kissy faces at Jotaro. Jotaro throws a chicken nugget which, from that very small distance, hits target. Polnareff moves his hand to catch it ten seconds after it connects.

Avdol decides to open fire. "So, Jotaro." He bats his lashes exaggeratedly and Polnareff thinks he might die. "Kakyoin, hmm?"

"What about him." Jotaro moves to Polnareff's chicken nugget box to grab another for his arsenal, but Polnareff stuffs his mouth full of them instead.

"Oh, you know," Avdol leans to the right and flings his arm across Polnareff's shoulders with the grace of a magician revealing a trick. "Ahaha, Oh, Kakyoin, you're _so_ funny and witty and _handsome_."

"He _is_ funny. What about Polnareff," Jotaro counters.

Polnareff perks up. "What _about_ Polnareff."

" _Nothing_ about Polnareff," Avdol hastily cuts in, and Polnareff is briefly stunned by a stab of hurt so deep in his chest he's surprised his ribs don't crack from the force of it.

He scrambles for an excuse. "Oh, hang on. Brain wave. Wait, wait, I didn't get to plan this in detail beforehand. Give me ten seconds. Bathroom break." It's a fairly weak excuse, but he's full of those. He hastily pushes himself past Avdol's knees and jogs a little to the men's restrooms. He hears Kakyoin come back and ask why he's hurrying right before he closes the door as gently behind him as he possibly can.

The sound of it bounces on the tiles.

He blindly walks to the washing basins and smashes the top of the tap to turn it on. The water is a little warmer than what he likes from his bathroom sinks, but he makes do in the face of minor emotional crisis.

His eyes pick up movement in the very corner of his vision. He turns his head, and stops.

"Holy fuck."

* * *

" _Sooo,_ guess who I ran into." Polnareff power-walks back to their table, hands still wet and hair slightly dishevelled. "Terence _fucking_ d'Arby. Bathroom. Applying makeup."

Kakyoin looks up from his small mountain of fries. "For work?"

"Yeah, he's– this job is really something he's real stellar at, I promise you." Polnareff squishes himself back into his booth, climbing over the back instead of pushing past his friend. "I asked him to pop by our table for a proper Mickey Dee's happy birthday."

Jotaro's face gains thirty wrinkles in the single second between the end of Polnareff's statement and his own reply. "I hate you."

"Yeah, yeah," Polnareff waves the comment off with a delighted smile. "Here he comes now, dude."

Their table turns to look and their responses collectively form the range you'd expect in one renaissance painting.

Jotaro looks like this is the best birthday he's ever had. Terence d'Arby looks like Polnareff was the doctor and he was the stranger dragged from the street for a live organ donation — a very agonised expression unfitting for the usually jolly mascot of the restaurant. Terence lifts the corners of his red-painted lips barely enough to be noticeable. "Yeah, yeah. If my boss is watching, I asked you how you're enjoying your stay at McDonald's."

" _Really_ fucking stellar, now that you're here, mister McDonald." Polnareff reaches out to give him a hand, which he pointedly ignores. "Can I call you Ronald? Ronny."

"You can go die," Terence replies stoically. He holds up a little bundle of flags. "If one of you _doesn't_ have a birthday, I'm sticking these up your ass."

"Don't blow a gasket, Ronny." Polnareff makes a wild, two-handed gesture at Jotaro, who's attempting to stare daggers directly into his eyes. "We've got your birthday boy right here, don't we, Jotes. The big two-oh. No legal alcohol, but legal most other things."

"I'm going to kill you. I'm going to kick your ass." Jotaro bats Polnareff's hands back down to the table. "I'm going to kick a hole in your ass and it's going to be so huge I can take a stroll through it. And you," He points threateningly at Terence. "Don't fucking touch me."

Polnareff continues, undisturbed. "Oh, Jotaro. Mascots are people just like us."

"Mascots aren't people. Their heads are too large and their hands are fucked up."

Terence balks at that, affronted. "This is just my head."

"Yeah."

" _Ugh_ ," Terence grumbles. "I'm just doing my job, dude, so let me do the dumb-ass birthday wishes and give you a complimentary _flag_ and I'll be off. If you leave me a bad review, I'll kill you."

Kakyoin laughs. "You know, I don't think you could, Mister McDonald."

"Probably not," Terence admits, "but I'd beat any of you at the arcade, where it _really_ matters."

Polnareff coughs. "Hhg _nerd_ ," almost at the same time as Kakyoin folds his hands in front of him, and replies with a, "Yeah, I still don't think you could. Ever heard of HGE?"

"Oh, that's you?" Terence leans his hand on Jotaro's shoulder. Polnareff watches it touch down as if in slow-motion. Footage of a rocket landing on the moon. "Yeah, I've heard of you. Took me a day to beat you enough to have you off the high-score list."

Kakyoin looks briefly sour. Jotaro cracks his knuckles. He makes long eye-contact with everyone at the table, turns around and smashes his fist directly into Ronald McDonald's red nose. He grinds the heel of his shoe into Terence's chest when he hits the ground. "Don't touch me, dipshit."

Polnareff thinks this might be the second best day of his life, despite minor hiccups, and second only to the day he met Mohammed Avdol. They don't end up leaving a review.


End file.
